Revelation
THE TRINITY OF EVIL,
ETC.
PART III
THE TRINITY OF EVIL, AND THE
MANIFESTATION OF THE WICKED ONE
COMMENCING FULFILLMENT OF
THE FIRST PROMISE [TO THE WOMAN’S SEED].
(Chap. xi. 19 - xii.)
THE trumpets, as we have seen, carry us to the end of all.
What follows here, therefore, is not in continuation of them, but a new
beginning, in which we find the development of details, - of course as to what
is of primary importance, and involving principles of the deepest interest and
value for us. Through all, the links between the Old Testament and the New are
fully maintained, and we have the full light of the double testimony. On our
part, we shall need on this account a more patient and protracted examination
of that which comes before us.
The last verse of the eleventh chapter
belongs properly to the twelfth. It characterizes what is to follow rather than
what precedes, and, when we remember that Israel is upon the scene, is of
greatest significance. The temple of God is opened in heaven, and there is seen
in His temple the ark of His covenant. From the world below it had disappeared,
and the temple itself been overthrown, - the testimony of His displeasure with
an apostate people. Nor, though the temple were replaced, as after the
Babylonish captivity had been the case, could the ark ever be restored by
man’s hand. It was gone, and with it the token of Jehovah’s presence
in the midst - a loss evidently irretrievable from man’s side. Yet if
Israel had no longer thus the assurance of what they were to Him, in heaven all
the time, though in secret, the unchangeable goodness of God remained. The ark
abode, as it were, with Him, and the time was now come to manifest this: the
inner sanctuary of the heavens was opened, and there was the ark still seen.
To us who are accustomed to translate these types into the realities
they represent, this is all simple. The ark is Christ, and, as the gold outside
the shittim-wood declared, is Christ in glory, gone up after His work
accomplished - the work which had provided the precious blood which had
sprinkled the mercy-seat. Israel had indeed rejected the lowly Redeemer, and
imprecated upon themselves the vengeance due to those who shed it. Yet, though
the wrath came, Israel was neither totally nor finally rejected. The blood of
Jesus speaketh better things than that of Abel, and is before God the
justification of a grace that shall yet be shown them. The literal ark is
passed away, as Jeremiah tells us, never to return; but instead of that throne
of His of old, a more magnificent grace has declared that Jerusalem itself
shall be called "the throne of the Lord; and all the nations shall be gathered
unto it, to the name of the Lord, to Jerusalem: neither shall they walk any
more after the imagination of their evil heart." (Jer. iii. i6, 17.)
The ark, then, seen in the temple in heaven is the sign of God’s
unforgotten grace toward Israel; but the nations are not yet ready to welcome
that grace, nor indeed are the people themselves, save a remnant, who on that
account pass through the bitterest persecution. To that the chapter following
bears decisive testimony, as it does of the interference of God for them.
Therefore is it that when the sign of His faithfulness to His covenant is seen
in heaven, on the earth there ensue convulsion and a storm of divine wrath:
"there were lightnings and voices and thunders and an earthquake, and great
hail."
And now a "great sign" appears in heaven, "a woman clothed with
the sun, and the moon under her feet, and upon her head a crown of twelve
stars; and she being with child cried, travailing in birth, and in pain to be
delivered." The sign appears in heaven, not because the woman is actually
there, but because she is seen according to the mind of God toward her. Who the
woman is should be quite plain, as the child she brings forth is He who is to
rule all nations with a rod of iron. That is Christ, assuredly, and the mother
of Christ is not the virgin, as we see clearly by what follows, still less the
Church, of which in no sense is Christ born, but Israel, "of whom, as
concerning the flesh, Christ came," says the apostle. (Rom. ix. 4.) Thus she is
seen clothed with the glory of the sun, - that is, of Christ Himself as He will
presently appear (Mal. iv. 2) in supreme power, for the sun is the ruler of the
day. As a consequence, her glory of old, before the day-dawn, the reflected
light of her typical system, is like the moon here under her feet. Upon her
head the crown of twelve stars speaks naturally of her twelve tribes, - planets
now around the central sun.
The next words carry us back, however,
historically, to the time before Christ. She is in travail with Messiah, - a
thought hard to realize or understand, except as we realize what the
fulfillment of God’s promise as to Christ involved in the way of suffering
on the part of the nation. To them while under the trial of law, and with the
issue (to man’s thought, of course,) uncertain, Christ could not be born;
the prosperous days of David must go by; the heirs of David be allowed to show
out what was in their heart, and be carried to Babylon; humiliation, sorrow,
captivity, fail to produce result, until the voice of prophecy even lapses with
Malachi; until the long silence, as of death, is broken by the cry at last, "To
us a child is born." Here is at least one purpose, as it would seem, of that
triple division of the genealogy of the Lord in Matthew, the governmental
gospel, in which the first fourteen generations bring one to the culmination of
their national prosperity, the second is a period of decline to the captivity,
the third a period of resurrection, but which only comes at last, and as in a
moment, after the failure of every natural hope. Thus in the government of God
Israel must have her travail-time.
But before we see the birth of the
man-child, we are called to look at "another sign in heaven," "a great red
dragon, having seven heads and ten horns, and seven diadems upon his heads,"
These heads and horns we shall presently find upon the fourth beast, or
world-empire, but we are not left doubtful as to who the dragon is. Here we
find the first in all this part of those interpretations which are given
henceforth here and there throughout the book: the dragon is " that ancient
serpent which is called the devil and Satan, which deceiveth the whole world."
Thus as the dawn rises upon the battlefield the combatants are discerned. It is
Satan who here as the "prince of this world" appears as if incarnate in the
last world empire. "Seven heads" show perfection of world-wisdom; and every one
of these heads wears a diadem, or despotic crown. The symbolic meaning of the
number does not at all preclude another meaning historically, as Scripture
history is every where itself symbolic, as is nature also. The ten horns
measure the actual extent of power, and infer by their number responsibility
and judgment.
The serpent of old has thus grown into a dragon - a
monster -"fiery red," as the constant persecutor of the people of God, and he
draws with his tail the third part of the stars of heaven, and casts them to
the earth. The analogy of the action of the little horn in Daniel (viii. zo),
as well as the scope of the prophecy before us, would lead us to think here of
Jews, not Christians, and certainly not angels, as to whom the idea of casting
them to the earth would seem quite inappropriate. The "tail" implies the false
prophet (Isa. ix. is), and therefore it is apostasy among the professing people
of God that is indicated. False teaching is eminently characteristic of satanic
power at all times, and far more successful than open violence.
"And
the dragon stood before the woman which was ready to be delivered, to devour
her child as soon as it was born, And she was delivered of a son, a man-child,
who is to rule all the nations with a rod of iron: and her child was caught up
to God, and to His throne." The power of Satan, working through the heathen
empire of Rome, was thus, with better knowledge than Rome had, in armed watch
against the woman and her seed. The census mentioned in Luke as to have gone
into effect at the time of Christ’s birth, and which was actually carried
out after the sceptre had wholly departed from Judah, was in effect a
tightening of the serpent-coil around his intended victim. Divine power used it
to bring a Galilean carpenter and his wife to Bethlehem, and then, as it were
without effort, cancelled the imperial edict. Only from the nation itself could
come the sentence which should, as far as man could do so, destroy it, and that
sentence was in Pilate’s handwriting upon the cross. But from the cross
and the guarded grave the woman’s Seed escaped victoriously: "her child
was caught up to God, and to His throne."
All is thus far easy of
interpretation, In what follows, there is more difficulty, although it admits
of satisfactory solution. "And the woman fled into the wilderness, where she
has a place prepared of God, that there they may nourish her a thousand, two
hundred, and threescore days." There Daniel’s seventieth week comes in
again, and evidently the last half of it. But the prophecy goes on immediately
from the ascension of Christ to this time, not noticing a gap of more than
eighteen centuries which has already intervened between these periods. How,
then, can we explain this omission and granting it can be explained, what is
the connection between these two things that seem, in more than time, so far
apart, - the ascension of Christ, and Israel’s flight into the wilderness
for this half-week of years? The answer to the first question is to be found in
a character of Old Testament prophecy of which already we have had one example,
and that in the prophecy of the seventy weeks itself. The last week, although
part of a strictly determined time on Israel, is cut off from the sixty-nine
preceding by a gap slightly longer than that in the vision before us, the
sixty-ninth week reaching only to "Messiah the Prince." (Dan. ix. 25.) He is
cut off and has nothing: the blessing cannot, therefore, come in for them;
instead, there is a time of warfare - a controversy between God and the people
which is not measured, and which is not yet come to an end. Of this the
seventieth week is the conclusion, while it is also the time of their most
thorough apostasy - the time to which we have come in this part of Revelation.
This lapse of prophecy as to Israel is coincident with the Christian
dispensation, the period in which God is taking out of the earth (and
characteristically out of the Gentile nations,) a heavenly people. True, there
are Jews saved still, - "there is," as the apostle says, "at the present time
also, a remnant according to the election of grace." But these are no longer
partakers of Jewish hopes: blessed be God, they have better ones; but the
nation as such in the meanwhile is given up, as Micah distinctly declares to
them should be the case, while he also declares to them the reason of this, and
the limit which God has appointed to it. His words are one of the clearest of
Old Testament prophecies to Christ, so clear that nothing can be clearer, and
are those cited by the chief priests and scribes themselves in proof of "where
Christ should be born." "They shall smite the Judge of Israel," says the
prophet, "with a rod upon the cheek." It is His people who do this, - His own,
to whom He came, and they "received Him not." Then he declares the glory of the
rejected One: "But thou, Bethlehem-Ephratah, though thou be little among the
thousands of Judah, yet out of thee shall He come forth unto Me, that is to be
Ruler in Israel, whose goings forth have been of old, from everlasting." (Chap.
v. i, 2.) But what will be the result then of His rejection? This is answered
immediately: "Therefore will He give them up, until the time that she which
travaileth hath brought forth; then the remnant of His brethren shall return
unto the children of Israel."
The last sentence of this remarkable
prophecy is a clear intimation of what we know to be the fact, that in this
time of national rejection there would be "brethren" - Jewish evidently - of
this Judge of Israel, whose place would not be with Israel; while at the end of
the time specified, such converted ones would again find their place in the
nation. Meanwhile, Israel being given up, the blessing of the earth which waits
upon theirs is suspended also: the shadow rests upon the dial plate of
prophecy; time is as it were uncounted. Christ is gone up on high, and sits
upon the Father’s throne: the kingdom of heaven is begun, indeed, but only
its "mysteries," unknown to the Old Testament, "things which have been kept
secret from the foundation of the world." (Matt. xiii. II, 35.)
Here,
then, where we return to take up the thread of Old Testament prophecy, it is no
wonder if the style of the Old Testament be again found. We have again the gap
in time uncounted, the Christian dispensation treated as a parenthesis in
God’s ways with the earth, and the woman’s Seed caught away to God
and to His throne. Then follows, without apparent interval, the Jewish flight
into the wilderness during the three and a half years of unequalled
tribulation. But this does not answer the second question - that as to the
connection between the catching away of the manchild and the woman’s
flight. For this we must look deeper than the surface, and gather the
suggestions which in Scripture everywhere abound, and here only more openly
than usual demand attention. That which closes the Christian dispensation we
have seen to be what is significantly parallel to that which opens it. In the
Acts, the history of the Church is prefaced with the ascension of the Lord:
that which will close its history is the removal of His people. This naturally
raises the inquiry, If Christ and His people be so one as in the New Testament
they are continually represented, may not the man-child here include both, and
the gap be bridged over in this way? The promise to the overcomer in Thyatira
links them together in what is attributed to the man-child - the ruling the
nations with a rod of iron; and the mention of this seems to intimate the time
for the assumption of the rod at hand.
This, then, completes the
picture and harmonizes it, so that it may be well accepted as the truth;
especially as this acceptance only recognizes that which is otherwise known as
true, and makes no additional demands upon belief.
The man-child caught
up to God and to His throne, the woman flies into the wilderness, into a place
prepared of God, where they nourish her for the time of trouble. The woman is
the nation as in the sight of God; not all Israel, nor even all the saints in
Israel, but those who are ordained of God to continue, and who therefore
represent it before Him. The apostate mass are cut off by judgment (Zech. xiii.
8, Isa. iv. 3, 4). The martyred saints go up to heaven. Still God preserves a
people to be the nucleus of the millennial nation, and this, of course, it is
the special desire of Satan to destroy. They are preserved by the hand of God,
though amid trial such as the "wilderness" naturally indicates, and which is
designed of God for their purification.
And now there ensues that which
in the common belief of Christians had long before taken place, but which in
fact is the initial stage of final judgment, - Satan is cast out of heaven.
"And there was war in heaven: Michael and his angels fought against the dragon;
and the dragon fought and his angels, and prevailed not; neither was their
place found any more in heaven. And the great dragon was cast out, - that old
serpent called the devil and Satan, which deceiveth the whole world: he was
cast out into the earth, and his angels were cast out with him."
As I
have said, the simplest interpretation of this is counter to the common belief
of Christendom. Satan has, according to the thought of many, long been in hell,
though he is (strangely enough) allowed to leave it and ramble over the earth
at will. To these, it is a grotesque, weird and unnatural thought that the
devil should have been suffered all this time to remain in heaven. Man has
evidently been allowed to remain on earth, but then - beside the fact of death
removing his successive generations - toward him there are purposes of mercy in
which Satan has no part. The vision-character of Revelation may be objected
against it also, so that the simplest interpretation may seem on that very
account the widest from the truth. Does not our Lord also say that He saw
"Satan fall as lightning from heaven"? (Luke x. i8.) And the apostle, that the
angels which sinned, He cast down to hell? (2 Pet. ii. 4 Jude 6.) Such passages
would seem with many decisively to affirm the ordinary view.
In fact,
it is only the last passages that have any real force; and here another has
said, "It seems hardly possible to consider Satan as one of these," - the
angels spoken of, - " for they are in chains, and guarded till the great day;
he is still permitted to go about as the tempter and the adversary, until his
appointed time be come."* As to our Lord’s words, they are easily to be
understood as in the manner often of prophecy, "I saw," being equivalent to "I
foresaw." On the other hand, that the "spiritual hosts of wickedness" with
which now we wrestle are "in heavenly places" is told us plainly in Ephesians
(vi. 12,R.V.); and in the passage in Revelation before us, no less plainly. For
the connection of this vision with what is still future we have already seen,
and shall see further, and the application to Satan personally ought not to be
in doubt. The "dragon" is indeed a symbol; but "the devil and Satan," is the
interpretation of it, and certainly not as figurative as the dragon
itself.
Scripture implies also in other ways what we have here. When
the apostle speaks of our being "sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise, which
is the earnest of our inheritance," he adds that it is to be that "until the
redemption of the purchased possession," - that is, until we get the
inheritance itself (Eph. i. iii). But we get it then by redemption, not our
own, but of the inheritance itself. Our inheritance has therefore to be
redeemed, and this redemption takes place manifestly when the heirs as a whole
are ready for it. Now redemption, it is plain, in this case, like the
redemption of the body, is a redemption by power, - God laying hold of it to
set it free in some sense from a condition of alienation from Himself, and to
give his people possession. And if the manchild include "those who are
Christ’s at His coming," then the purging of the heavenly places by the
casting of Satan and his angels out is just the redemption of the heavenly
inheritance.
Elsewhere we read, accordingly, of the reconciliation of
heavenly as of earthly things (Col. i. 20). And this is a phrase which, like
the former, implies alienation previously. And here it is on the ground of the
cross: "having made peace through the blood of the cross." In Hebrews, again,
as "it was necessary that the patterns of things in the heavens " - as in the
tabernacle - "should be purified with" sacrificial blood, so must "the heavenly
things themselves with better sacrifices than these." (Heb. ix. 23.) The work
of Christ having glorified God as to the sin which has defiled not the earth
only but the heavens, He can come in to deliver and bring back to Himself what
is to be made the inheritance of Christ and His "joint-heirs."
All is,
then, of a piece with what is the only natural meaning of this war in heaven.
The question of good and evil, every-where one, receives its answer for heaven
as for earth, first, in the work of Christ, which glorifies God as to all, and
then, as the fruit of this, in the recovery of what was alienated from
Him, the enemies of this glorious work being put under Christ’s feet. This
now begins to be, though even yet in a way which to us may seem strange:
strange to us it seems to hear of war in heaven,. - of arrayed hosts on either
side, - of resistance though unsuccessful, the struggle being left as it would
seem to creature-prowess, God not directly interfering: "Michael and his angels
fought with the dragon; and the dragon fought and his angels, and prevailed
not."
After all, is it stranger that this should be in heaven than on
the earth? Are not God’s ways one? And is not all the long-protracted
struggle allowed purposely to work out to the end thus, the superior power
being left to show itself as the power resident in the good itself, as in that
which is the key of the whole problem, the cross of the Son of Man? If God
Himself enter the contest, He adapts Himself to the creature-conditions, and
comes in on the lowest level, - not an angel even, but a man.
Let us
look again at the combatants: on the one side is Michael - " Who is like God ?
" - a beautiful name for the leader in such a struggle! On the opposite side is
he who first said to the woman, "Ye shall be as God;" and whose pride was his
own condemnation (2 Tim. iii. 6). How clearly the moral principle of the
contest is here defined! Keep but the creature’s place, you are safe,
happy, holy; the enemy shall not prevail against you: leave it, you are lost.
The " dragon " - from a root which speaks of "keen sight " - typifies what
seems perhaps a preternatural brilliancy of intellect, serpent-cunning, the
full development of such "wisdom" as that with which he tempted Eve, but none
of that which begins with the fear of God. He is therefore, like all that are
developed merely upon one side, a monster. This want of conscience is shown in
his being the devil - the "false accuser;" his heart is made known in his being
Satan - the adversary.
These are the types of those that follow them;
and Michael is always the warrior-angel, characterized as he is by his name, as
Gabriel - "man of God" - is the messenger of God to men. If God draw near to
men, it is in the tender familiarity of manhood that He does so. How plainly do
these names speak to us!
In the time of distress that follows upon
earth, Daniel is told that "Michael shall stand up, the great prince that
standeth for the children of thy people; . . and at that time thy people shall
be delivered, every one that shall be found written in the book." Here in
Revelation we have the heavenly side of things, and still it is Michael that
stands up as the deliverer. The tactics of divine warfare are not various, but
simple and uniform. Truth is simple and one; error manifold and intricate. The
spiritual hosts fight under faith’s one standard, and it is the banner of
Michael, "Who is like God?" Under its folds is certain victory.
The
dragon is cast out: the war in that respect is over; heaven is free. But he is
not yet cast into hell, nor even into the bottomless pit, but to the earth; and
thus the earth’s great trouble-time ensues. Satan comes down with great
wrath, because he knows that he has but a short time. How terrible a thing is
sin! How amazing that a full, clear view of what is before him should only
inspire this fallen being with fresh energy of hate to that which must all
recoil upon himself, and add intensity of torment to eternal doom! Even so is
every act of sin as it were a suicide; and he who committeth it is the slave of
sin (Jno. Viii. 34).
A great voice in heaven celebrates the triumph
there. "Now is come the salvation and power and kingdom of our God, and the
authority of His Christ; for the accuser of our brethren is cast down, who
accused them before our God day and night." The salvation spoken of here is
not, apparently, as some think, the salvation of the body; for it is explained
directly as deliverance of some who are called "our brethren" from the
accusation of Satan. The voice seems, therefore, that of the glorified saints,
and the "brethren" of whom they speak, the saints on earth, who had indeed by
individual faithfulness overcome in the past those accusations which are now
forever ended. Satan’s antipriestly power, as another has remarked, is at
an end.
Yet he may, and does, after this, exercise imperial power, and
stir up the most violent persecution of the people of God, and these still may
be called not to love their lives unto death. It is not here, then, that his
power ceases: they have conflict still, but not with "principalities and powers
in heavenly places." (Eph. vi. 12.) Heaven is quiet and calm above them, if
around is still the noise of the battle. And how great is the mercy that thus
provides for them during those three and a half years of unequalled tribulation
still to come! Is not this worthy of God that, just at the time when
Satan’s rage is greatest, and arming the world-power against His people,
the sanctuary of the soul is never invaded by him: the fiery darts of the
wicked one cease; he is no more "prince of the power of the air," but
restricted to the earth simply, to work through the passions of men, which he
can inflame against them. Accordingly to this he gives himself with double
energy: "And when the dragon saw that he was cast unto the earth, he
persecuted the woman who brought forth the man-child." But God interferes: "And
there were given unto the woman the two wings of the great eagle, that she
might fly into the wilderness, into her place, where she is nourished for a
time and times and half a time, from the face of the serpent."
The
words recall plainly the deliverance from Egypt. Pharaoh king of Egypt is
called thus by the prophet, "the great dragon that lieth in the midst of his
rivers," (Ezek. XXIX. 3,) and is himself the concentration of the malice of the
world-power; while God says to delivered Israel at Sinai, "Ye have seen what I
did unto the Egyptians; and how I bare you on eagle’s wings, and brought
you to Myself." (Ex. XIX. 4.) The reference here seems definitely to this: it
is not, as in the common version, "a" great eagle, indefinitely, but "the"
great eagle, - the griffon, perhaps, than which no bird has a more powerful or
masterly flight. Clearly it is divine power that is referred to in these words:
in the deliverance out of Egypt there was jealous exclusion of all power
beside. Israel was to be taught the grace and might of a Saviour-God. And so in
the end again it will be when He repeats, only in a grander way, the marvels of
that old deliverance, and "allures" the heart of the nation to Himself.
Miracle may well come in again for them, and it may be that the wilderness
literally will once more provide shelter and nourishment for them. Figure and
fact may here agree together, and so it often is; the terms even seem to imply
the literal desert here, just because it is evidently a place of shelter that
divine love provides, and sustenance there; and what more natural than that the
desert, by which the land of Israel is half encompassed, should be used for
this? That which follows seems to be imagery borrowed from the desert also.
Like the streams of Antilibanus, many a river is swallowed up in the sand, as
that is which is now poured out of the dragon’s mouth. If it be an army
that is pictured, the wilderness is no less capable of the absorption of a
nation’s strength. The river being cast out of his mouth would seem to
show that it is by the power of his persuasion that men are incited to this
overflow of enmity against the people of God, which is so completely foiled
that the baffled adversary gives up further effort in this direction, and the
objects of his pursuit are after this left absolutely unassailed.
But
those who so escape, while thus securing the existence of the nation - and
therefore identified with the woman herself, - are not the whole number of
those who in it are converted to God; and "the remnant of her seed" become now
the object of his furious assault. These are indeed those, as it would seem,
with whom is the testimony of Jesus, which is, we are assured, "the spirit of
prophecy." (Chap. xix. io.) These are they, perhaps, who amid these times of
trouble go forth, as from age to age the energy of the Spirit has incited men
to go forth, taking their lives in their hand that they might bring the word of
God before His creatures, and who have been ever of necessity the special
objects of satanic enmity. They are the new generation of those who as men of
God have stood forth prominently for God upon the earth, and have taken from
men on the one hand their reward in persecution, but from God on the other the
sweet counterbalancing acknowledgment. It is of such the Lord says,
"Blessed are ye when they shall reproach and persecute you, and say all manner
of evil against you falsely for My sake. Rejoice, and be exceeding glad; for
great is your reward in heaven, for so persecuted they the prophets that were
before you." (Matt. v. ii, 12.)
Noticeable it is that it is in heaven
still this new race of prophets find their reward. The two witnesses whom we
have seen ascend to heaven in a cloud belong to this number; and those who in
Daniel as turning many to righteousness, shine as the stars for ever and ever,
Earth casts them out, and they are seen in our Lord’s prophecy as brethren
of the King, hungering and athirst, in strangership, naked and sick and in
prison (Matt. xxv. 35, 36, 40). Heaven receives them in delight as those of
whom the earth was not worthy, - a gleaning after harvest, as it were, of wheat
for God’s granary, - a last sheaf of the resurrection of the saints, which
the twentieth chapter of the book before us sees added to the sitters upon the
thrones, among the "blessed and holy" now complete. How well are they cared for
who might seem left unsheltered to Satan’s enmity! They have lost the
earthly blessing, they have gained the heavenly; their light has been quenched
for a time, to shine in a higher sphere forever. Blessed be God!
We may
follow, then, the new development of satanic enmity without fear. We shall gain
from considering it. Their enemy and ours is one and the same: it is Satan, the
old serpent, the ancient homicide, and we must not be "ignorant of his
devices." His destiny is to be overcome, and that by the feeblest saint against
whom he seems for the present to succeed so easily.
Chapter Two - the resurrection of the fourth
empire
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