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<b>THE WOMAN AND THE BEAST</b> (<a href='B:730 12:1-17'>Rev 12:1-17</a>)<p/> It is necessary to read this chapter as a whole before we examine it in detail. A great sign appeared in the sky--a woman clothed with the sun, and with the moon beneath her feet, and with a crown of twelve stars on her head; and she was with child, and she cried aloud in her labour and in her agony to bear the child.<p/>And another sign appeared in heaven--lo! a great flame-coloured dragon, with seven heads and ten horns, and with seven royal diadems upon its heads. Its tail swept a third part of the stars from the sky and cast them on to the earth. The dragon stood in front of the woman who was about to bear the child so that it might devour the child as soon as she bore him.<p/>She bore a man child who is destined to rule the nations with a rod of iron; and her child was snatched away to God, even to his throne.<p/>The woman fled to the desert where she had a place prepared for her by God, that they might care for her there for one thousand two hundred and sixty days.<p/>There was war in heaven, in which Michael and his angels fought with the dragon and the dragon and his angels fought with them. The dragon was powerless to prevail and there was no longer any place for him in heaven. The great dragon, the ancient serpent, who is called the Devil and Satan, the deceiver of all mankind, was thrown down to earth, and his angels were thrown down with him. And I heard a great voice in heaven saying:<p/>"Now have come the salvation and the power and the kingdom of our God, and the authority of his Anointed One, because there has been cast down the accuser of our brothers, who night and day accuses them before God. They have overcome him through the blood of the Lamb and through the word of their witness, and they did not love their soul to death. Rejoice, therefore, you heavens and you who dwell in them. Alas for the earth and the sea! because the Devil has come down to you with great wrath and well aware that he has only a little time left."<p/>When the Devil saw that he was cast down into the earth, he pursued the woman who bore the man-child. The two wings of the great eagle were given to the woman, that she might fly to the desert to her place, where she is cared for for a time and times and half a time away from the serpent. And after the woman the serpent hurled water from his mouth like a river, that he might cause her to be carried away by the river of water; but the earth helped the woman and opened its mouth and swallowed the river which the dragon hurled from his mouth.<p/>The dragon was enraged because of the woman and went away to make war with the rest of her family, those who keep the commandments of God and who bear their witness to Jesus. And he stood on the sand of the sea.<p/></i> The Woman With Child (<a href='B:730 12:1-2'>Rev 12:1-2</a>)<p/>John saw an amazing vision, like a tableau in the sky, whose details he draws from many sources. The woman is clothed with the sun; the moon is her footstool; and she has a crown of twelve stars. The Psalmist says of God that he covers himself with light as with a garment (<a href='B:230 104:2'>Psa 104:2</a>). In the Song of Solomon the poet describes his loved one as being fair as the moon and clear as the sun (SS 6:10). So John got part of his picture from the Old Testament. But he added something which the pagans of Asia Minor would well recognize as part of the old Babylonian picture of the divine. They frequently depicted their goddesses as crowned with the twelve signs of the zodiac and this also is in John's mind. It is as if he took all the signs of divinity and beauty which he could find and added them together.<p/>This woman is in labour to bear a child who is undoubtedly the Messiah, Christ, compare <a href='B:730 12:5'>Rev 12:5</a> where he is said to be destined to rule the nations with a rod of iron. That is a quotation from <a href='B:230 2:9'>Psa 2:9</a> and was an accepted description of the Messiah. The woman, then, is the mother of the Messiah.<p/>(i) If the woman is the "mother" of the Messiah, an obvious suggestion is that she should be identified with Mary; but she is so clearly a superhuman figure that she can hardly be identified with any single human being.<p/>(ii) The persecution of the woman by the dragon suggests that she might be identified with the Christian Church. The objection is that the Christian Church could hardly be called the mother of the Messiah.<p/>(iii) In the Old Testament the chosen people, the ideal Israel, the community of the people of God, is often called the Bride of God. "Your Maker is your husband" (<a href='B:290 54:5'>Isa 54:5</a>). It is Jeremiah's sad complaint that Israel has played the harlot in disloyalty to God (<a href='B:300 3:6-10'>Jer 3:6-10</a>). Hosea hears God say: "I will betroth you to me for ever" (<a href='B:350 2:19-20'>Hos 2:19-20</a>). In the Revelation itself we hear of the marriage feast of the Lamb and the Bride of the Lamb (<a href='B:730 19:7'>Rev 19:7</a>; <a href='B:730 21:9'>Rev 21:9</a>). "I betrothed you to Christ," writes Paul to the Corinthian Church, "to present you as a pure bride to her one husband" (<a href='B:540 11:2'>2Co 11:2</a>).<p/>This will give us a line of approach. It was from the chosen people that Jesus Christ sprang in his human lineage. It is for the ideal community of the chosen ones of God that the woman stands. Out of that community Christ came and it was that community which underwent such terrible suffering at the hands of the hostile world. We may indeed call this the Church, if we remember that the Church is the community of God's people in every age.<p/>From this picture we learn three great things about this community of God. First, it was out of it that Christ came; and out of it Christ has still to come for those who have never known him. Second, there are forces of evil, spiritual and human, which are set on the destruction of the community of God. Third, however strong the opposition against it and however sore its sufferings, the community of God is under the protection of God and, therefore, it can never be ultimately destroyed.<p/>The Hatred Of The Dragon (<a href='B:730 12:3-4'>Rev 12:3-4</a>)<p/>Here we have the picture of the great, flame-coloured dragon. In our study of the antecedents of Antichrist we saw that the eastern peoples regarded creation in the light of the struggle between the dragon of chaos and the creating God of order. In the Temple of Marduk, the creating god, in Babylon there was a great image of a "red-gleaming serpent" who stood for the defeated dragon of chaos. There can be little doubt that that is where John got his picture. This dragon appears in many forms in the Old Testament.<p/>It appears as Rahab. "Was it not thou that didst cut Rahab in pieces, that didst pierce the dragon?" (<a href='B:290 51:9'>Isa 51:9</a>). It appears as leviathan. "Thou didst break the heads of the dragons in the waters. Thou didst crush the heads of leviathan" (<a href='B:230 74:12-14'>Psa 74:12-14</a>). In the day of the Lord, God with his sore and great and strong sword will punish leviathan (<a href='B:290 27:1'>Isa 27:1</a>). It appears in the dramatic picture of behemoth (<a href='S:H930'>H930</a>) in <a href='B:220 40:15-24'>Job 40:15-24</a>. The dragon which is the arch-enemy of God is a common and terrible figure in the thought of the east. It is the connection of the dragon and the sea which explains the rivers of water which the dragon emits to overcome the woman (<a href='B:730 12:15'>Rev 12:15</a>).<p/>The dragon has seven heads and ten horns. This signifies its mighty power. It has seven royal diadems. This signifies its complete power over the kingdoms of this world as opposed to the kingdom of God. The picture of the dragon sweeping the stars from the sky with its tail comes from the picture in Daniel of the little horn who cast the stars to the ground and trampled on them (<a href='B:340 8:10'>Dan 8:10</a>). The picture of the dragon waiting to devour the child comes from Jeremiah, in which it is said of Nebuchadnezzar that "he has swallowed me like a monster" (<a href='B:300 51:34'>Jer 51:34</a>).<p/>H. B. Swete finds in this picture the symbolism of an eternal truth about the human situation. In the human situation, as Christian history sees it, there are two figures who occupy the centre of the scene. There is man, fallen, always under the attack of the powers of evil but always struggling towards the birth of a higher life. And there is the power of evil, ever watching for its opportunity to frustrate the upward reach of man. That struggle had its culmination on the Cross.<p/>The Snatching Away Of The Child (<a href='B:730 12:5'>Rev 12:5</a>)<p/>The child which the woman bore was destined to rule the nations with a rod of iron. As we have seen, this quotation from <a href='B:230 2:9'>Psa 2:9</a> indicates that the child was the Messiah.<p/>When the child was born, he was rescued from the dragon by being snatched up to heaven, even to the throne of God. The word used here for the child being snatched up is the same as is used in <a href='B:590 4:17'>1Th 4:17</a> to describe the Christian being caught up to meet the Lord in the air (compare <a href='B:540 12:2'>2Co 12:2</a> where Paul uses it to tell of himself being caught up into the third heaven).<p/>In a sense this is a puzzling passage. As we have seen, the reference is to Jesus Christ as Messiah, and, as John tells it, the story goes straight from his Birth to his Ascension; the snatching up must refer to the Ascension. As the Acts has it: "He was lifted up" (<a href='B:510 1:9'>Act 1:9</a>). The strange thing is the total omission of the earthly life of Jesus. This is due to two things.<p/>It is due to the fact that John is not at the moment interested in anything other than the fact that Jesus Christ was delivered by the direct action of God from the hostile powers which continually attacked him.<p/>It is due also to the fact that all through the Revelation John's interest is not in the human Jesus but in the exalted Christ, who is able to rescue his people in the time of their distresses.<p/>The Flight To The Desert (<a href='B:730 12:6'>Rev 12:6</a>)<p/>Here we read of the woman escaping into the desert from the attack of the dragon. By the help of God she escaped into a place where she was nourished and which had been prepared for her.<p/>There is no doubt that there are many pictures in John's mind. There is the picture of the escape of Elijah to the brook Cherith, where he was nourished by the ravens (<a href='B:110 17:1-7'>1Ki 17:1-7</a>); and of his flight into the desert, when he was nourished by the angelic messenger (<a href='B:110 19:1-8'>1Ki 19:1-8</a>). There is the picture of the flight of Mary and Joseph with the baby Jesus into Egypt to escape the murderous intent of Herod (<a href='B:470 2:13'>Mat 2:13</a>). But two incidents are specially in John's mind.<p/>(i) In the time of Antiochus Epiphanes, when it was death to keep the law and to worship the true God, many "who sought after justice and judgment went down to the wilderness to dwell there" (1Ma_2:29).<p/>(ii) Jerusalem was destroyed by the Romans in A.D. 70: The years immediately before that were terrible years of bloodshed and of revolution in which anyone with eyes to see and a mind to understand could forecast what was about to happen. Eusebius, the Christian historian, tells us that, before the final disaster came, the Christians in Jerusalem had been warned by a revelation given to approved men to leave Jerusalem and to cross the Jordan into Perea and to dwell there in a town called Pella (Eusebius: The Ecclesiastical History 3: 5). This is actually referred to in the account of Jesus' words to the disciples about the last times. When they saw the last terrors coming they were to flee to the mountains (<a href='B:480 13:14'>Mar 13:14</a>); this is exactly what they did.<p/>H. B. Swete again sees something symbolic here. The Church had to flee into the wilderness and the wilderness is lonely. For the early Christians life was lonely; they were isolated in a pagan world. There are times when Christian witness is bound to be a lonely thing--but even in human loneliness there is divine companionship.<p/>The one thousand two hundred and sixty days are once again the standard period of distress.<p/>Satan, The Enemy Of God (<a href='B:730 12:7-9'>Rev 12:7-9</a>)<p/>Here we have the picture of war in heaven between the Dragon, the Ancient Serpent, the Devil, Satan--all these names describe the one evil being--and Michael and all his angels. The idea seems to be that, such was his hatred, the dragon pursued the Messiah even to heaven, where he was met by Michael with his heavenly legions and finally cast out. It will be convenient to gather together here what Scripture has to say about Satan; it presents a complicated picture.<p/>(i) There is the echo of the ancient story of a primaeval war in heaven. Satan was an angel who conceived "the impossible thought" of placing his throne higher than that of God (2Enoch 29:4, 5) and was cast out of heaven. The Babylonians had a similar story of Ishtar, the god of the morning star. He, too, rebelled against God and was cast down from heaven. There is one definite reference to this old story in the Old Testament. In Isaiah we read: "How you are fallen from heaven, O Day Star, son of Dawn!" (<a href='B:290 14:12'>Isa 14:12</a>). The sin which caused the fall from heaven was pride. There may be a reference to this in <a href='B:610 3:6'>1Ti 3:6</a>, where it is urged that the Christian preacher must be kept from pride lest he fall into the same condemnation as the devil did. When Satan was cast out of heaven, his dwelling-place became the air in which he had to wander; that is why he is sometimes called The Prince of the Air (<a href='B:560 2:2'>Eph 2:2</a>).<p/>(ii) There is a strong line of thought in the Old Testament in which Satan is still an angel under God's command and with access to his presence. In Job we find Satan numbered amongst the sons of God and possessing access to his presence (<a href='B:220 1:6-9'>Job 1:6-9</a>; <a href='B:220 2:1-6'>Job 2:1-6</a>); and in Zechariah we also find Satan in the presence of God (<a href='B:450 3:1-2'>Zec 3:1-2</a>).<p/>To understand this conception of Satan we must first understand what the word Satan means. Satan originally meant simply an adversary. Even the angel of the Lord who stood in the path of Balaam to stop him from his sinful intentions can be called a satan against him (<a href='B:40 22:22'>Num 22:22</a>). The Philistines feared that David would be their satan (<a href='B:90 29:4'>1Sa 29:4</a>). When Solomon entered upon his kingdom, he was so blessed by God that he had no satan left (<a href='B:110 5:4'>1Ki 5:4</a>). But later the foreign kings, Hadad and Rezon, were both to become his satans (<a href='B:110 11:14'>1Ki 11:14</a>; <a href='B:110 11:23'>1Ki 11:23</a>).<p/>In the Old Testament Satan was the angel who was the counsel for the prosecution against men in the presence of God, their Adversary. Thus he is the counsel for the prosecution against Job, cynically suggesting that Job serves God for what he can get out of it and that, if he is involved in disaster, his loyalty will soon cease (<a href='B:220 1:11-12'>Job 1:11-12</a>), and he is given permission by God to use every weapon short of death to test Job (<a href='B:220 2:1-6'>Job 2:1-6</a>). So in Zechariah Satan is the accuser of Joshua the High Priest (<a href='B:450 3:1-2'>Zec 3:1-2</a>). In <a href='B:230 109:6'>Psa 109:6</a> the King James Version actually uses the word Satan in this sense: "Let Satan stand at the right hand of the wicked." The Revised Standard Version rightly alters the translation to: "Let an accuser bring him to trial."<p/>So, in the Old Testament Satan was the angel who is the counsel for the prosecution when a man was on trial before God; while Michael was the counsel for the defence. Between the Testaments there seems to have been a belief that there was more than one Satan engaged in the task of bringing accusations against men and we read of the archangel whose duty it was to fend off the Satans (I Enoch 40:6).<p/>For the most part in the Old Testament Satan was very much under the jurisdiction of God.<p/>(iii) In the Old Testament we never read of the Devil, although sometimes we come across devils; but in the New Testament Satan becomes the Devil. The Greek is Diabolos (<a href='S:G1228'>G1228</a>), literally a slanderer. There is not a very great dividing line between being a prosecuting counsel who brings charges against men and inventing such charges and tempting men into actions where such charges will be forthcoming. So, then, in the New Testament Satan becomes the seducer of men. We find that in the story of the temptations of Jesus the three names are indiscriminately used. This power of evil is Satan (<a href='B:470 4:10'>Mat 4:10</a>; <a href='B:480 1:13'>Mar 1:13</a>); the Devil (<a href='B:470 4:1'>Mat 4:1</a>; <a href='B:470 4:5'>Mat 4:5</a>; <a href='B:470 4:8'>Mat 4:8</a>; <a href='B:470 4:11'>Mat 4:11</a>; <a href='B:490 4:2-3'>Luk 4:2-3</a>; <a href='B:490 4:5'>Luk 4:5</a>; <a href='B:490 4:13'>Luk 4:13</a>); and the Tempter (<a href='B:470 4:3'>Mat 4:3</a>).<p/>Since this is so, we find Satan engaged in certain nefarious purposes in the New Testament story. He seeks to seduce Jesus in his temptations. He puts the terrible scheme of betrayal into Judas' mind (<a href='B:500 13:2'>Joh 13:2</a>; <a href='B:500 13:27'>Joh 13:27</a>; <a href='B:490 22:3'>Luk 22:3</a>). He is out to make Peter fall (<a href='B:490 22:31'>Luk 22:31</a>). He persuades Ananias to keep back part of the price of the possession he had sold (<a href='B:510 5:3'>Act 5:3</a>). He uses every wile (<a href='B:560 6:11'>Eph 6:11</a>) and every device (<a href='B:540 2:11'>2Co 2:11</a>) to achieve his seducing purposes. He is the cause of illness and pain (<a href='B:490 13:16'>Luk 13:16</a>; <a href='B:510 10:38'>Act 10:38</a>; <a href='B:540 12:7'>2Co 12:7</a>). He hinders the work of the gospel by sowing the tares which choke the good seed (<a href='B:470 13:39'>Mat 13:39</a>), and by snatching away the seed of the word from the human heart before it can gain an entry (<a href='B:480 4:15'>Mar 4:15</a>; <a href='B:490 8:12'>Luk 8:12</a>).<p/>Thus Satan becomes the enemy of God and man, the Evil One par excellence, for we should probably translate in the Lord's Prayer: "Deliver us from the Evil One" (<a href='B:470 6:13'>Mat 6:13</a>).<p/>He can be called the Ruler of this World (<a href='B:500 12:31'>Joh 12:31</a>; <a href='B:500 14:30'>Joh 14:30</a>; <a href='B:500 16:11'>Joh 16:11</a>), for, having been cast out of heaven, he has to exert his evil influence among men. He comes to be identified with the serpent because of the story of the Fall in <a href='B:10 3:1-24'>Gen 3:1-24</a>.<p/>(iv) The strange thing is that the history of Satan is a tragedy, whatever version of the story we use. In one version, Satan is the angel of light, once the greatest of the angels, whose pride caused him to seek to be higher than God and who was cast out of heaven. In the other version, Satan was a real servant of God and perverted his service into an opportunity for sinning. Satan is the supreme example of that tragedy in which the best becomes the worst.<p/>The Song Of The Martyrs In Glory (<a href='B:730 12:10-12'>Rev 12:10-12</a>)<p/>In these verses we have the song of the glorified martyrs when Satan is cast out of heaven.<p/>(i) Satan appears as the Accuser par excellence; Satan, as H. B. Swete put it, is "the cynical libeller of all that God has made." According to Renan he is "the malevolent critic of creation." Satan stands for the sleepless vigilance of evil against good.<p/>The historical background of the age in which the Revelation was written lends sharpness to this picture of Satan. This was the great age of the informer, the delator. People were constantly being arrested, tortured, killed because someone had informed against them. Tacitus, writing some years before, had said: "He who had no foe was betrayed by his friend." That ancient world knew only too well what malevolent, cynical, venal accusers were like.<p/>(ii) This picture, then, shows us what we might call the cleansing of heaven. Satan, the malevolent Accuser, is cast out for ever. It is for this reason that the martyrs in glory sing their song of triumph.<p/>The martyrs are those who have overcome Satan.<p/>(a) Martyrdom is itself a conquest of Satan. The martyr has proved superior to every seduction and to every threat and even to the violence of Satan. Here is a dramatic truth for life every time we choose to suffer rather than to be disloyal is the defeat of Satan.<p/>(b) The victory of the martyrs is won through the blood of the Lamb. There are two meanings here. First, on his Cross and through his Resurrection Jesus overcame forever the worst that evil could do to him; and those who have entrusted their lives to him share in that victory. Second, through the sacrifice of Jesus Christ on the Cross sin is forgiven; when a man accepts in faith what Christ has done for him, his sins are wiped out. And when he is forgiven, there is nothing for which he can possibly be accused. As Charles Wesley put it:<p/>No condemnation now I dread;<p/>Jesus, and all in him is mine!<p/>Alive in him, my living Head,<p/>And clothed in righteousness divine,<p/>Bold I approach the eternal throne,<p/>And claim the crown, through Christ my own.<p/>(c) The martyrs are victorious, because they lived the great principle of the gospel. They did not consider life more important than loyalty. "He who loves his life loses it; and he who hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life" (<a href='B:500 12:25'>Joh 12:25</a>). This principle runs all through the gospel (<a href='B:470 10:39'>Mat 10:39</a>; <a href='B:470 16:25'>Mat 16:25</a>; <a href='B:480 8:35'>Mar 8:35</a>; <a href='B:490 9:24'>Luk 9:24</a>; <a href='B:490 17:33'>Luk 17:33</a>). For us this is not necessarily a matter of dying for the faith but of setting loyalty to Jesus Christ before the comfortable way.<p/>(iii) This passage finishes with the idea that Satan is cast out of heaven and has come down to earth. His power in heaven is broken, but he has still power on earth; and he rages ferociously because he knows that all that he has left is a short time upon this earth before he is finally destroyed.<p/>The Attack Of The Dragon (<a href='B:730 12:13-17'>Rev 12:13-17</a>)<p/>The dragon, that is the Devil, on being cast out of heaven and descending to earth, attacked the woman who was the mother of the man child. We have seen that the woman stands for the Church in its widest sense of God's Chosen People from the midst of whom God's Anointed One came.<p/>Here, then, is a certain symbolism. The dragon can injure the child by injuring the mother; that is to say, to injure the Church is to injure Jesus Christ. The words of the Risen Christ to Paul on the Damascus road were: "Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?" (<a href='B:510 9:4'>Act 9:4</a>). Paul's persecution had been directed against the Church; but the Risen Christ makes it clear that persecution of his Church is persecution of himself. When we despoil the Church of the help we might have given it, we despoil Jesus of the help we might have given him; and when we serve the Church, we serve Jesus himself.<p/>We have already seen (<a href='B:730 12:6'>Rev 12:6</a>) that the escape of the woman to the desert place comes from the escape of the Church to Pella on the other side of Jordan before the final destruction of Jerusalem. But in the escape of the woman and in the attack of the dragon John uses two pictures very familiar to those who knew the Old Testament.<p/>The woman escaped on the two wings of the great eagle. Again and again in the Old Testament the eagle's wings are the symbol of the upbearing arms of God. "You have seen, God said to Israel, "what I did to the Egyptians, and how I bore you on eagles' wings, and brought you to myself" (<a href='B:20 19:4'>Exo 19:4</a>). "Like an eagle that stirs up its nest, that flutters over its young, spreading out its wings, catching them, bearing them on its pinions, the Lord alone did lead him (the people of Israel)" (<a href='B:50 32:11-12'>Deu 32:11-12</a>). As the Scots paraphrase has it of <a href='B:290 40:31'>Isa 40:31</a>:<p/>On eagles' wings they mount, they soar,<p/>their wings are faith and love,<p/>Till, past the cloudy regions here,<p/>they rise to heav'n above.<p/>We may note that, when men came to allegorize Scripture, Hippolytus saw in the eagles' wings the symbol of "the two holy arms of Christ outstretched upon the Cross."<p/>The second picture is of the floods of water cast out by the serpent. We have seen how the old dragon of chaos was a sea dragon and, therefore, to connect the floods with him is quite natural. But again here we have an Old Testament picture. Again and again in the Old Testament tribulation and persecution are likened to an overwhelming flood. "All thy waves and thy billows have gone over me" (<a href='B:230 42:7'>Psa 42:7</a>). It is God's promise to the Psalmist that "the rush of great waters" shall not come near him (<a href='B:230 32:6'>Psa 32:6</a>). If the Lord had not helped him, the waters would have overwhelmed him and the streams would have gone over his soul (<a href='B:230 124:4'>Psa 124:4</a>). When he passes through the waters, God will be with him (<a href='B:290 43:2'>Isa 43:2</a>).<p/>The chapter finishes with two further pictures.<p/>When the dragon ejected the floods of waters, the earth swallowed them up and so the woman was saved. It is not difficult to see where John got this picture. It quite often happened in Asia Minor that rivers were swallowed up in the sand only to reappear after travelling a distance underground. There was, for instance, a case of this near Colossae, an area which John must have known well.<p/>But it is not so easy to see what the picture means. The symbolism is very likely this. Nature itself is on the side of the man who is faithful to Jesus Christ. As Froude the historian pointed out, in the world there is a moral order and in the long run it is well with the good and ill with the wicked.<p/>Finally John has the picture of the dragon going to war with the rest of the family of the woman, with the rest of the Church. This tells of the coming spread of persecution all over the Church.<p/>As John saw it, Satan cast down to earth is in his last terrible convulsion and that convulsion is going to involve the whole family of the Church in the agony of persecution. 


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<b>THE POWER OF THE BEAST</b> (<a href='B:730 13:1-18'>Rev 13:1-18</a>) I saw a beast coming up from the sea. It had ten horns and seven heads; and it had ten royal crowns on its horns; and on its heads I saw blasphemous names.<p/>The beast which I saw was like a leopard; its feet were like a bear's feet; its mouth was like a lion's mouth; and to it the dragon delegated its power and its throne and its great authority.<p/>I saw that one of its heads looked as if it had been wounded to death; and its deadly wound had been healed.<p/>The whole earth was drawn in wonder after the beast; and they worshipped the dragon, because it had delegated its authority to the beast; and they worshipped the beast. "Who," they said, "is like the beast? Who is able to make war with it?" To it there was given a mouth which made arrogant and blasphemous claims; and it was given authority to go on doing so for forty-two months. It opened its mouth to launch blasphemies against God, to insult his name and his dwelling-place and those who dwell in the heavens.<p/>It was given power to make war with the dedicated people of God and to overcome them; and it was given authority over every tribe and people and tongue and race. All who dwell upon the earth will worship it, everyone whose name has not been written from the foundation of the world in the Book of Life of the Lamb who was slain.<p/>Whoever has an ear, let him hear.<p/>If anyone is to be taken into captivity, into captivity let him go. If anyone slays with the sword, he himself will be slain with the sword. Here is the summons to steadfastness and to loyalty from the dedicated people of God.<p/>I saw another beast coming up from the land, and it had two horns like a lamb and it spoke like a dragon. It exercises before it all the power of the first beast. It causes the earth and those who dwell in it to worship the first beast, the beast whose deadly wound has been healed. It works such great miracles that it causes even fire to come down from heaven in the sight of men. It deceives those who dwell on the earth, because of the miracles which it has the power to do in the presence of the beast. It tells those who dwell upon the earth to make an image of the beast, who has the wound of the sword, and who lived again. It was given power to give the breath of life to the image of the beast, so that the image of the beast should even speak and so that it should bring it about that all who do not worship the beast should be killed. It causes all, small and great, rich and poor, free men and slaves, to take to themselves a mark on their right hand or on their forehead, It so arranges things that no one can buy or sell, unless he has the mark, which consists of the name of the beast or the number of his name.<p/>Here there is need of wisdom. Let him who has understanding reckon the number of the beast, for the number is the number of a man; and his number is six hundred and sixty-six.<p/></i><p/>It will be much easier if we treat this chapter as a whole before we undertake any detailed study of it. That is all the more necessary because this chapter is the essence of the whole book.<p/>The general meaning is this. Satan, cast out of heaven, knows that his time is short and is determined to do as much damage as he can. To cause that damage on earth he delegates his power to the two beasts who are the central figures in this chapter.<p/>The beast from the sea stands for the Roman Empire, to John the incarnation of evil and is described in terms which come from Daniel. In <a href='B:340 7:3-7'>Dan 7:3-7</a> there is a vision of four great beasts who come out of the sea; they are the symbols of the great empires which have held world power and of an empire which, when Daniel was written, was holding world sway. The beast like a lion with an eagle's wings stands for Babylon; the one like a bear stands for Media; the one like a leopard with four wings stands for Persia; and the fourth stands for the empire of Alexander the Great. As the writer of Daniel saw these world powers, they were so savage and inhuman that they could be symbolized by nothing but bestial figures. It was only natural for a Jew to go back to this picture of the beastly empires when he wished to find a picture of another satanic empire threatening God's people in his own day.<p/>John's picture in the Revelation puts together in the one beast the features of all four. It is like a leopard with bear's feet and a lion's mouth. That is to say, for John the Roman Empire was so satanic that it included all the terrors of the evil empires which had gone before.<p/>This beast has seven heads and ten horns. These stand for the rulers and the emperors of Rome. Since Augustus, the first Roman Emperor, there had been seven emperors; Tiberius, A.D. 14-37; Caligula, A.D. 37-41; Claudius, A.D. 41-54; Nero, A.D. 55-68; Vespasian, A.D. 69-79; Titus, A.D. 79-81; Domitian, A.D. 81-96: These seven emperors are the seven heads of the beast. But in addition it is said that the beast had ten horns. The explanation of this second figure lies in this. After the death of Nero there was a short period of almost complete chaos. In eighteen months three different men briefly occupied the imperial power, Galba, Otho and Vitellius. They are not included in John's list of the seven heads but are included in the list of the ten horns.<p/>John says that on the heads of the beast there were blasphemous names. These are the titles which the emperors took to themselves. Every emperor was called divus or sebastos (<a href='S:G4575'>G4575</a>), which means divine. Frequently the very name God or Son of God was given to the emperors; and Nero on his coins called himself The Saviour of the World. For any man to call himself divine was a blasphemous insult to God. Further, the later emperors took as their title the Latin word dominus, or its Greek equivalent kurios (<a href='S:G2962'>G2962</a>), both of which mean lord, and in the Old Testament are the special title of God and in the New Testament the special title of Jesus Christ.<p/>The second beast which figures in this chapter, the beast from the land, is the whole provincial organization of magistrates and priesthoods designed to enforce Caesar worship, which confronted the Christians with the choice either of saying, "Caesar is Lord, or of dying.<p/>So, then, our picture falls into place. These two savage beasts, the might of Rome and the organization of Caesar worship, launched their combined attack on the Christians--and no nation had ever withstood the might of Rome. What hope had the Christians--poor, defenceless, outlaws?<p/>The Head Wounded And Restored<p/>There is another recurring theme in this chapter. Among the seven heads there is one which has been mortally wounded and restored to life (<a href='B:730 13:3'>Rev 13:3</a>); that head above all is to be worshipped (<a href='B:730 13:12'>Rev 13:12</a>; <a href='B:730 13:14'>Rev 13:14</a>); it is the supreme evil, the supreme enemy of Christ.<p/>We have seen that the seven heads stand for the seven Roman emperors. A head wounded and restored to life will, therefore, stand for an emperor who died and came to life again. Here is symbolized the Nero redivivus, or Nero resurrected, legend which the Christians fused with the idea of Antichrist. In the Sibylline Oracles we read of the expectation in the last terrible days of the coming of a king from Babylon whom all men hate, a king fearful and shameless and of abominable parentage (5: 143-148). A matricide shall come from the east and bring ruin on the world (5: 361-364). One who dared the pollution of a mother's murder will come from the east (4: 119-122). An exile from Rome with a myriad of swords shall come from beyond the Euphrates (4: 137-139).<p/>It is only when we realize what Nero was that we see how his return might well seem the coming of Antichrist.<p/>No man ever started life with a worse heritage than Nero. His father was Cnaeus Domitius Ahenobarbus, who was notorious for wickedness. He had killed a freedman for no other crime than refusing to drink more wine; he had deliberately run over a child in his chariot on the Appian Way; in a brawl in the Forum he had gouged out the eye of a Roman knight; and he finally died of dropsy brought on by his debauchery. His mother was Agrippina, one of the most terrible women in history. When Ahenobarbus knew that he and Agrippina were to have a child he cynically said that nothing but a monstrous abomination could come from himself and her. When Nero was three, Agrippina was banished by the Emperor Caligula. Nero was handed over to the care of his aunt Lepida who entrusted his education to two wretched slaves, one a barber and the other a dancer.<p/>Under the Emperor Claudius, Agrippina was recalled from exile. She had now only one ambition--somehow to make her son emperor. She was warned by fortune-tellers that, if ever Nero became emperor, the result for her would be disaster. Her answer was: "Let him kill me, so long as he reigns."<p/>Agrippina set to work with all the passion and the intrigue of her stormy nature. Claudius already had two children, Octavia and Britannicus, but Agrippina badgered him into adopting Nero as his son, when Nero was eleven years of age, and persuaded him to marry her although he was her uncle. Agrippina then summoned the famous philosopher, Seneca, and the great soldier, Afranius Burrus, to be Nero's tutors. Steadily Britannicus, the heir to the throne, was pushed into the background and Nero was given the limelight.<p/>For five years the marriage lasted and then Agrippina arranged for Claudius' poisoning by a dish of poisoned mushrooms. When Claudius lay in a coma, she hastened his end by brushing his throat with a poisoned feather. No sooner had Claudius died, than Nero was led forth as emperor, the army having been bribed to support him.<p/>A curious situation ensued. For the next five years Rome was never better governed. Nero was busy playing at painting, sculpture, music, theatricals; he was the complete dilettante; and the wise Seneca and the upright Burrus governed the empire.<p/>Then Nero stopped being the cultured dilettante and embarked on a career of vicious crime. At night with other gilded youths he would roam the streets attacking all whom he could find. Worse was to come. He murdered Britannicus as a possible rival.<p/>No young man or woman was safe from his lust. He was a blatant homosexual. He publicly married a youth named Sporus in a state wedding; and he took Sporus with him on a bridal tour of Greece. He was "married" to a freedman called Doryphorus. He took Poppaea Sabina the wife of Otho, his closest friend, as his paramour, and kicked her to death when she was with child.<p/>He had a passion for wild extravagance and extracted money from all and sundry. The imperial court was a welter of murder, immorality and crime.<p/>One of Nero's passions was building. In A.D. 64 came the great fire of Rome which burned for a week. There is not the slightest doubt that Nero began it or that he hindered every attempt to extinguish it, so that he might have the glory of rebuilding the city. The people well knew who was responsible for the fire but Nero diverted the blame on to the Christians and the most deliberately sadistic of all persecutions broke out. He had the Christians sown up in the skins of wild animals and set his savage hunting dogs upon them. He had them enclosed in sacks with stones and flung into the Tiber. He had them coated with pitch and set alight as living torches to light the gardens of his palace.<p/>The insanity of evil grew wilder and wilder. Seneca was forced to commit suicide; Burrus was murdered by a poisoned draught which Nero sent him as a cure for a sore throat; anyone who incurred Nero's slightest displeasure was killed.<p/>Agrippina made some attempt to control him and finally he turned against her. He made repeated attempts to murder her--by poison, by causing the roof of her house to collapse, by sending her to sea in a boat designed to break up. Finally, he sent his freedman Anicetus to stab her to death. When Agrippina saw the dagger, she bared her body. "Strike my womb, she said, "because it bore a Nero."<p/>It could not last. First Julius Vindex rebelled in Gaul, then Galba in Spain. Finally the senate took its courage in its hands and declared Nero a public enemy. In the end he died by suicide in the wretched villa of a freedman called Phaon.<p/>This is the head of the beast, wounded and restored; the Antichrist whom John expected was the resurrected Nero.<p/>We must now look at this chapter section by section in more detail. This may involve a certain amount of repetition, but in a chapter so central and so difficult the repetition will make for clarity.<p/>The Devil And The Beast (<a href='B:730 13:1-5'>Rev 13:1-5</a>)<p/>We begin by summarizing the facts already set out in the introductory material to this chapter. The beast is the Roman Empire; the seven heads are the seven emperors in whose time Caesar worship became a power in the empire--Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius, Nero, Vespasian, Titus and Domitian. The ten heads are these seven emperors together with the three other rulers whose total reigns lasted for only eighteen months in the time of chaos which followed the death of Nero--Galba, Otho and Vitellius. The head which was wounded and restored to life again symbolizes the Nero redivivus idea.<p/>In this picture the Roman Empire is symbolized by a beast which was like a leopard, with a bear's feet and a lion's mouth.<p/>This indicates a completely changed attitude to Rome. Paul had received nothing but help from the Roman government. Time and again the intervention of the Roman authorities and the fact that he was a Roman citizen had saved him from the fury of the Jews. It had been so in Philippi (<a href='B:510 16:1-40'>Act 16:1-40</a>); in Corinth (<a href='B:510 18:1-28'>Act 18:1-28</a>); in Ephesus (<a href='B:510 19:1-41'>Act 19:1-41</a>); and in Jerusalem (<a href='B:510 21:1-40'>Act 21:1-40</a>; <a href='B:510 22:1-30'>Act 22:1-30</a>). It had been Paul's view that the powers that be were ordained of God and that all Christians must render a conscientious obedience to them (<a href='B:520 13:1-6'>Rom 13:1-6</a>). In the Pastoral Epistles prayer is to be made for kings and for all who are in authority (<a href='B:610 2:1'>1Ti 2:1</a>). In First Peter the injunction is to be a good citizen; to be subject to governors; to fear God, and to honour the emperor (<a href='B:670 2:13-17'>1Pe 2:13-17</a>). In <a href='B:600 2:6-7'>2Th 2:6-7</a> the most probable explanation is that it is the Roman Empire which is the restraining force which keeps the world from disintegrating into chaos and the man of sin from beginning his reign.<p/>In the Revelation things are changed. Caesar worship has emerged. The emperors call themselves by blasphemous names--divine, Son of God, Saviour, Lord. The might of Rome is arrayed to crush the Christian faith; and Rome has become the agent of the devil.<p/>In the description of the beast, H. B. Swete sees a symbol of the power of Rome. The empire has the vigilance, craft and cruelty of the leopard, ever ready to spring upon its prey; it has the crushing strength of the bear; it is like the lion whose roar terrifies the flock.<p/>"Who is like the beast?" is a grim parody of the great question: "Who is like thee, O Lord, among the gods?" (<a href='B:20 15:11'>Exo 15:11</a>). H. B. Swete points out that the beast's claim to preeminence lies not in any moral greatness but in sheer brute force. Any empire founded on brute force and not on moral greatness is anti-God. The description of the beast as speaking haughty things (<a href='B:730 13:5'>Rev 13:5</a>) comes from the description in Daniel of the little horn (<a href='B:340 7:8'>Dan 7:8</a>; <a href='B:340 7:20'>Dan 7:20</a>).<p/>One great truth stands out in this section. In this world a man and a nation have the choice between being the instrument of Satan and the instrument of God.<p/>Insult To God (<a href='B:730 13:6-9'>Rev 13:6-9</a>)<p/>(i) This may be taken quite generally. It may mean that the power of the empire and the institution of Caesar worship are a blasphemy against God, and heaven, and the angels. If we like to take this a little further, we can take more out of the word used for God's dwelling-place; the Greek is skene (<a href='S:G4633'>G4633</a>), which means a tent or a tabernacle or a place to dwell. Although it has really no connection with it, skene (<a href='S:G4633'>G4633</a>) always reminded a Jew of the Hebrew word shechinah, the glory of God. (Compare the Hebrew verb, shakan, to dwell, <a href='S:H7931'>H7931</a>). So it may be that John is saying that the whole conduct of the Roman Empire, and particularly the institution of Caesar worship, is an insult to the glory of God.<p/>(ii) But it is possible to take this passage in a more particular sense. The beast is the Roman Empire. It may be that John is thinking of all the ways--not just those in his own time--in which Rome had insulted God and his dwelling-place.<p/>Most Roman Emperors were embarrassed by Caesar worship; but not Caligula, A.D. 37-41, who was an epileptic and more than a little mad. He took his divinity very seriously and insisted that he should be universally worshipped.<p/>The Jews had always been exempt from Caesar worship because the Romans were well aware of their immovable allegiance to the worship of one God. This is closely parallel to the fact that of all peoples in the empire the Jews alone were exempt from military service, because of their strict observance of food laws and their absolute observance of the Sabbath. But Caligula insisted that an image of himself should be set up within the Holy of Holies in the Temple in Jerusalem. The Jews would have suffered extermination rather than submit to such desecration of the Holy Place but Caligula had actually collected an army to enforce his demand (Josephus: Antiquities of the Jews 18: 8) when by great good fortune he died.<p/>If ever there was an insult to the dwelling-place of God, this action of Caligula was one. And it may well be that this notorious incident is in John's mind when he speaks of the insults which the beast launched against the dwelling-place of God.<p/>Earthly Danger And Divine Safety (<a href='B:730 13:6-9'>Rev 13:6-9</a> Continued)<p/>It was given to the beast to overcome those whose names were not written in the Book of Life. The Book of Life is mentioned frequently in the Revelation (<a href='B:730 3:5'>Rev 3:5</a>; <a href='B:730 13:8'>Rev 13:8</a>; <a href='B:730 17:8'>Rev 17:8</a>; <a href='B:730 20:12'>Rev 20:12</a>; <a href='B:730 20:15'>Rev 20:15</a>; <a href='B:730 21:27'>Rev 21:27</a>). In the ancient world rulers kept registers of those who were citizens of their realms; only when a man died or lost his rights as a citizen, was his name removed. The Book of Life is the register of those who belong to God.<p/>In <a href='B:730 13:8'>Rev 13:8</a> there is a question of translation. So far as the Greek goes, there are two equally possible translations, either: "Those whose names have been written before the foundation of the world in the Book of Life of the Lamb that was slain, or, "Those whose names have been written in the Book of Life of the Lamb who was slain from the foundation of the world."<p/>(i) The first is undoubtedly the translation in the parallel passage in <a href='B:730 17:8'>Rev 17:8</a>. A close parallel would be in <a href='B:560 1:4'>Eph 1:4</a> where Paul says that God has chosen us in Jesus Christ before the foundation of the world. The meaning would then be that God has chosen his own from before the beginning of time, and nothing in life or in death, nothing in time or eternity, nothing that the Devil or the Roman Empire can ever do can pluck them from his hand. This is the rendering of the Revised Standard Version and the newer translations.<p/>(ii) The second translation speaks of Jesus Christ as the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world. A close parallel to this would be in <a href='B:670 1:19-20'>1Pe 1:19-20</a> where Peter speaks of Jesus and his sacrifice as being foreordained before the foundation of the world. The Jews held the belief that Michael, the archangel, was created before the foundation of the world to be the mediator between Israel and God; and that Moses was created before the foundation of the world to be the mediator of the covenant between God and Israel. There would, therefore, be nothing unfamiliar to Jewish thought in saying that Jesus was created before the beginning of the world to be the Redeemer of mankind.<p/>We have in these two translations two equally precious truths. But, if we must choose, we must choose the first, because there is no doubt that is the way in which John uses the phrase when he repeats it in <a href='B:730 17:8'>Rev 17:8</a>.<p/>The Christian's Only Weapons (<a href='B:730 13:10'>Rev 13:10</a>)<p/>At first sight this is a difficult verse.<p/>If anyone is to be taken into captivity, into captivity let him go.<p/>If anyone slays with the sword, he himself will be slain with the<p/>sword. Here is the summons to steadfastness and to loyalty from<p/>the dedicated people of God.<p/>The verse is made up of two quotations. It begins by quoting from <a href='B:300 15:2'>Jer 15:2</a>, where Jeremiah is told to tell the people that such as are for death will go forth to death; such as are for the sword will go forth to the sword; such as are for famine will go forth to famine; and such as are for captivity will go forth to captivity. The idea there is that there is no escaping the decree of God. The verse then goes to quote the saying of Jesus in <a href='B:470 26:52'>Mat 26:52</a>. In the Garden of Gethsemane, when the mob has come to arrest Jesus and Peter draws his sword to defend him, Jesus says: "Put your sword back into its place: for all who take the sword will perish by the sword." There are three things here.<p/>(i) If the Christian faith means imprisonment, the Christian must unmurmuringly accept it. Whatever is involved in following Christ, the Christian must accept.<p/>(ii) Christianity can never be defended by force; the man who takes the sword perishes with the sword. When the Roman government began persecuting, the Christians could be numbered perhaps by the hundred thousand; and yet it never occurred to them to use force to resist. It is an intolerable paradox to defend the gospel of the love of God by using the violence of man.<p/>(iii) There are weapons which the Christian can use and these are steadfastness and loyalty. The word for steadfastness is hupomone (<a href='S:G5281'>G5281</a>), which does not simply mean passively enduring but courageously accepting the worst that life can do and turning it into glory. The word for loyalty is pistis (<a href='S:G4102'>G4102</a>), which means that fidelity which will never waver in its devotion to its Master.<p/>The Power Of The Second Beast (<a href='B:730 13:11-17'>Rev 13:11-17</a>)<p/>This passage deals with the power of the second beast, the organization set up to enforce Caesar worship throughout the empire. Certain things are said about this power.<p/>(i) It produces signs and wonders, such as fire from heaven; it brings it about that the image of the beast should speak. Everywhere there were statues of the emperor in the presence of which the official act of worship was carried out. In all ancient religions the priests knew how to produce signs and wonders; they knew well how to produce the effect of a speaking, image. Pharaoh had had his magicians in the time of Moses, and the imperial priesthood had its experts in conjuring tricks and ventriloquism and the like.<p/>In <a href='B:730 13:11'>Rev 13:11</a> there is a curious phrase. This beast from the land is said to have two horns like a lamb; that is, it is a grim parody of the Lamb in the Christian sense of the term. But it is also said to speak like a dragon. It is just possible that that last phrase should be that it spoke like the serpent. The reference would then be to the serpent who seduced Eve in the Garden of Eden. The imperial priesthood could easily use seductive appeals: "Look what Rome has done for you; look at the peace and the prosperity you enjoy; have you ever known a greater benefactor than the emperor? Surely in simple gratitude you can give him this formal act of worship." There are always excellent arguments why the Church should compromise with the world; but the fact remains that, when it does, Christ is betrayed again.<p/>(ii) This beast brings it about that those who will not worship will be killed. That was, in fact, the law. If a Christian refused to make the act of worship to Caesar, he was liable to death. The death penalty was not always carried out; but, if a Christian had not the mark of the beast, he could not buy or sell. That is to say, if a man refused to worship the emperor, even if his life was spared, he would be economically ruined. It remains true that the world knows how to bring pressure to bear on those who will not accept its standards. Often still a man has to choose between material success and loyalty to Jesus Christ.<p/>The Mark Of The Beast (<a href='B:730 13:11-17'>Rev 13:11-17</a> Continued)<p/>Those who had given the worship to Caesar which was demanded had on them the mark of the beast on their right hand and on their forehead. This mark is another of the grim parodies which occur in this chapter; it is a parody of a sacred Jewish custom. When a Jew prayed, he wore phylacteries on his left arm and on his forehead. They were little leather boxes with little scrolls of parchment inside them on which the following passages were written-- <a href='B:20 13:1-10'>Exo 13:1-10</a>; <a href='B:20 13:11-16'>Exo 13:11-16</a>; <a href='B:50 6:4-9'>Deu 6:4-9</a>; <a href='B:50 11:13-21'>Deu 11:13-21</a>.<p/>The word for the mark of the beast is charagma (<a href='S:G5480'>G5480</a>), and it could come from more than one ancient custom.<p/>(i) Sometimes domestic slaves were branded with the mark of their owner. But usually they were branded only if they had run away or had been guilty of some grave misdemeanour. Such a mark was called a stigma (<a href='S:G4742'>G4742</a>) ; we still use the word in English. If the mark is connected with this, it means that those who worship the beast are his property.<p/>(ii) Sometimes soldiers branded themselves with the name of their general, if they were very devoted to him. This, to some extent, corresponds to the modern custom of tattooing upon one's person the name of someone specially dear. If the mark is connected with this, it means that those who worship the beast are his devoted followers.<p/>(iii) On every contract of buying or selling there was a charagma (<a href='S:G5480'>G5480</a>), a seal, and on the seal the name of the emperor and the date. If the mark is connected with this, it means that those who worship the beast accept his authority.<p/>(iv) All coinage had the head and inscription of the emperor stamped upon it, to show that it was his property. If the mark is connected with this, it again means that those who bear it are the property of the beast.<p/>(v) When a man had burned his pinch of incense to Caesar, he was given a certificate to say that he had done so. The mark of the beast may be the certificate of worship, which a Christian could obtain only at the cost of denying his faith.<p/>The Number Of The Beast (<a href='B:730 13:18'>Rev 13:18</a>)<p/>In this verse we are told that the number of the beast is six hundred and sixty-six; and it is almost certainly true that more ingenuity has been expended on this verse than on any other verse in Scripture. Who is this satanic beast so symbolized? It must be remembered that the ancient peoples had no figures and the letters of the alphabet did duty for numbers as well. This is as if in English we used A for 1, B for 2, C for 3, D for 4, and so on. Every word, therefore, and in particular every proper name, can also be a number. One charming and romantic way in which use was made of this fact is quoted by Deissmann. On the walls of Pompeii a lover wrote: "I love her whose number is 545, and thereby he at one and the same time identified and concealed his loved one!<p/>The suggestions as to the meaning of 666 are endless. Since it is the number of the beast, everyone has twisted it to fit his own arch-enemy; and so 666 has been taken to mean the Pope, John Knox, Martin Luther, Napoleon and many another. Dr. Kepler provides us with an example of what ingenuity produced during the Second World War. Let A = 100; B = 101; C = 102; D = 103 and so on. Then we can make this addition:<p/>H = 107<p/>I = 108<p/>T = 119<p/>L = 111<p/>E = 104<p/>R = 117<p/>and the sum is 666!<p/>Very early we saw that the Revelation is written in code; it is clear that nowhere will the code be more closely guarded than in regard to this number which stands for the arch-enemy of the Church. The strange thing is that the key must have been lost very early; for even so great a Christian scholar as Irenaeus in the second century did not know what the number stood for.<p/>We set down four of the very early guesses.<p/>Irenaeus suggested that it might stand for Euanthas. In Greek numbers E = 5; U = 400; A = 1; N = 50; TH (the Greek letter theta) = 9; A = 1; S = 200; and the sum is 666: But as to what Euanthas meant Irenaeus had no suggestion to make; so he had simply substituted one riddle for another.<p/>Another suggestion was that the word in question was Lateinos. L = 30; A = 1; T = 300; E = 5; I = 10; N = 50; O = 70; S = 200; and the sum is 666: Lateinos could be taken to mean Latin and, therefore, could stand for the Roman Empire.<p/>A third suggestion was Teitan. T = 300; E = 5; I = 10; T = 300; A = 1; N = 50; and the sum is 666: Teitan could be made to yield two meanings. First, in Greek mythology the Titans were the great rebels against God. Second, the family name of Vespasian and Titus and Domitian was Titus, and possibly they could be called the Titans.<p/>A fourth suggestion was arnoume. A = 1; R = 100; N = 50; 0 = 70; U = 400; M = 40; E = 5; and the sum is 666: It is just possible that arnoume could be a form of the Greek word arnoumai (<a href='S:G720'>G720</a>), "I deny." In this case the number would stand for the denial of the name of Christ.<p/>None of these suggestions is convincing. The chapter itself gives us by far the best clue. There recurs again and again the mention of the head that was wounded to death and then restored. We have already seen that that head symbolizes the Nero redivivus legend. We might well, therefore, act on the assumption that the number has something to do with Nero. Many ancient manuscripts give the number as 616: If we take Nero in Latin and give it its numerical equivalent, we get:<p/>N = 50<p/>E = 6<p/>R = 500<p/>O = 60<p/>N = 50<p/>The total is 666; and the name can equally well be spelled without the final N which would give the number 616: In Hebrew the letters of Nero Caesar also add up to 666:<p/>There is little doubt that the number of the beast stands for Nero; and that John is forecasting the coming of Antichrist in the form of Nero, the incarnation of all evil, returning to this world. 


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<b>THE FATHER'S OWN</b> (<a href='B:730 14:1'>Rev 14:1</a>)<p/><i> 14:1 I saw, and behold the Lamb stood on Mount Sion, and there were with him one hundred and forty-four thousand who had his name, and the name of his Father written on their foreheads.<p/></i><p/>John's next vision opens with the Lamb standing in triumph on Mount Sion and with him the one hundred and forty-four thousand of whom we read in <a href='B:730 7:1-17'>Rev 7:1-17</a>. They are marked with his name and with the name of his Father on their foreheads. We have already thought about the meaning of the marking but we must look at it again. In the ancient world a mark upon a person could stand for at least five different things.<p/>(i) It could stand for ownership. Often the slave was branded with his owner's mark, as sheep and cattle are branded. The company with the Lamb belong to God.<p/>(ii) It could stand for loyalty. The soldier would sometimes brand his hand with the name of the general whom he loved and would follow into any battle. The company of the Lamb are the veterans who have proved their loyalty.<p/>(iii) It could stand for security. There is a curious third or fourth century papyrus letter from a son to his father Apollo. Times are dangerous, and the son and the father are separated. The son sends his greetings and good wishes, and then goes on: "I have indeed told you before of my grief at your absence from among us, and my fear that something dreadful might happen to you, and that we may not find your body. Indeed, I often wished to tell you that, having regard to the insecurity, I wanted to stamp a mark upon you" (P. Oxy. 680). The son wished to put a mark upon his father's body in order to keep it safe. The company of the Lamb are those marked for security in life and in death.<p/>(iv) It could stand for dependence. Robertson Smith quotes a curious example of this. The great Arab chieftains had their humble clients who were absolutely dependent on them. Often the sheik would brand them with the same mark as he used to brand his camels to show that they were dependent on him. The company of the Lamb are those who are utterly dependent on his love and grace.<p/>(v) It could stand for safety. It was common for those who were the devotees of a god to be stamped with his sign. Sometimes that worked very cruelly. Plutarch tells us that after the disastrous defeat of the Athenians under Nicias in Sicily, the Sicilians took the captives and branded them on the forehead with a galloping horse, the emblem of Sicily (Plutarch: Nicias 29). 3 Maccabees tells us that Ptolemy the Fourth of Egypt ordered that "all Jews should be degraded to the lowest rank and to the condition of slaves; and that those who spoke against it should be taken by force and put to death; and that these when they were registered should be marked with a brand on their bodies, with the ivy leaf, the emblem of Bacchus" (3Maccabees 2:28, 293Maccabees 29).<p/>These instances involve degradation and cruelty. But there were others. The Syrians were regularly tattooed on the wrist or the neck with the mark of their god. But there is a more relevant instance than any of these. Herodotus (2: 113) tells us that there was a temple of Heracles at the Canopic mouth of the Nile which possessed the right of asylum. Any criminal, slave or free man, was safe there from pursuing vengeance. When such a fugitive reached that temple, he was branded with certain sacred marks in token that he had delivered himself to the god and that none could touch him any more. They were the marks of absolute security. The company of the Lamb are those who have cast themselves on the mercy of God in Jesus Christ and are for ever safe.<p/><b>THE SONG WHICH ONLY GOD'S OWN CAN LEARN</b> (<a href='B:730 14:2-3'>Rev 14:2-3</a>)


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 And I heard a voice from heaven like the sound of many waters and like the voice of great thunder, and the voice I heard was like the sound of harpers playing on their harps. And they were singing a new song before the throne and before the four living creatures and before the elders, and no one was able to learn the song except the one hundred and forty-four thousand who had been purchased for God from the earth.<p/></i><p/>This passage begins with a wonderful description of the voice of God.<p/>(i) It was like the sound of many waters. Here we are reminded of the power of the voice of God, for there is no power like the crash of the mountainous waves upon the beaches and the cliffs.<p/>(ii) It was like the voice of great thunder. Here we are reminded of the unmistakableness of the voice of God. No one can fail to hear the thunder-clap.<p/>(iii) It was like the sound of many harpers playing on their harps. Here we are reminded of the melody of the voice of God. There is in that voice the gentle graciousness of sweet music to calm the troubled heart.<p/>The Lamb's company were singing a song which only they could learn. Here there is a truth which runs through all life. To learn certain things a man must be a certain kind of person. The Lamb's company were able to learn the new song because they had passed through certain experiences.<p/>(a) They had suffered. There are certain things which only sorrow can teach. As someone made the poets say: "We learned in suffering what we teach in song." Sorrow can produce resentment but it can also produce faith and peace and a new song.<p/>(b) They had lived in loyalty. It is clear that, as the years pass on, the leader will draw closer to his loyal followers and they to him; then he will be able to teach them things the unfaithful or spasmodic follower can never learn.<p/>(c) That is another way of saying that the company of the Lamb had made steady progress in spiritual growth. A teacher can teach deeper things to a mature student than to an immature beginner. And Jesus Christ can reveal more treasures of wisdom to those who day by day grow up into him. The tragedy of so many is static Christianity.<p/><b>THE FINEST FLOWER</b> (<a href='B:730 14:4'>Rev 14:4</a> <b>a)</b><p/><i> 14:4a These are they who have not defiled themselves with women, for they are virgins.<p/></i><p/>We take this half verse by itself, for it is one of the most difficult sayings in the whole of the Revelation, and it is of the utmost importance to get its meaning clear. It describes the unsullied purity of those who are in the company of the Lamb, but in what does that purity consist?<p/>(i) Does it describe those who in sexual relationships have been pure? That can hardly be the case, for the people in question are described, not simply as pure, but as virgins, that is, as those who have never known sexual relations at all.<p/>(ii) Does it describe those who have kept themselves free from spiritual adultery, that is, from all disloyalty to Jesus Christ? Again and again in the Old Testament we find it said of the people of Israel that they went awhoring after strange gods (<a href='B:20 34:15'>Exo 34:15</a>; <a href='B:50 31:16'>Deu 31:16</a>; <a href='B:70 2:17'>Jdg 2:17</a>; <a href='B:70 8:27'>Jdg 8:27</a>; <a href='B:70 8:33'>Jdg 8:33</a>; <a href='B:350 9:1'>Hos 9:1</a>). But this passage does not read as if it was metaphorical.<p/>(iii) Does it describe those who have remained celibate? The days soon came when the Church glorified virginity and held that the highest Christian life was possible only for those who renounced marriage altogether. The Gnostics held that "marriage and generation are from Satan." Tatian held that "marriage is corruption and fornication." Marcion set up churches for those who were celibates and from which all others were barred. One of the greatest of the early fathers, Origen, voluntarily castrated himself to ensure perpetual virginity. In the Acts of Paul and Thecla (11) it is the charge of Demas against Paul that "he deprives young men of wives and maidens of husbands by saying that in no other way shall there be a resurrection for you save by remaining chaste and keeping the flesh chaste." There is a record of a Roman trial (Ruinart: Acts of the Martyrs, 27th April, 304) in which the Christians are described as "the people who impose upon silly women and tell them that they must not marry and persuade them to adopt a fanciful chastity." This is precisely the spirit which was to beget the monasteries and the convents, and the implication that everything to do with sex and the body is wrong.<p/>This is far from the teaching of the New Testament. Jesus glorified marriage, saying that for this cause a man left his own family and was so closely united to his wife that they were one flesh, and warning that what God has joined no man may put asunder (<a href='B:470 19:4-6'>Mat 19:4-6</a>). In his highest teaching Paul glorified marriage, likening the relationship of Christ to his Church to the relationship between man and wife (<a href='B:560 5:22-33'>Eph 5:22-33</a>). The writer to the Hebrews lays it down: "Let marriage be held in honour among all" (<a href='B:650 13:4'>Heb 13:4</a>).<p/>What, then, are we to say of our present passage? If we are to treat it honestly, we cannot avoid the conclusion that it praises celibacy and virginity and belittles marriage. There are two possible explanations.<p/>(a) It is possible that the writer of the Revelation did mean to exalt celibacy and virginity; the likelihood is that he was writing about A.D. 90 when this tendency was already in the Church. If that is so we will have to lay this passage on one side, because, tested by the rest of the New Testament, it is not a correct statement of the Christian ethic.<p/>(b) There is another possible interpretation. When scribes were copying New Testament books they often added notes and comments in the margin, to explain the text. It may well be that some scribe in later days, copying this passage wished to give his opinion as to who the one hundred and forty thousand were; and added in the margin: "This means those who never defiled themselves with women and who remained virgins." This is all the more likely since many of the later scribes were monks. When the manuscript was recopied, the comment in the margin may well have been included in the text as very commonly happened. This would then mean that the first half of <a href='B:730 14:4'>Rev 14:4</a> is not the words of John at all but the comment of a scribe.<p/><b>THE IMITATION OF CHRIST</b> (<a href='B:730 14:4'>Rev 14:4</a> <b>b-5)</b><p/><i> 14:4b-5 These are they who follow the Lamb wherever he goes. They were bought from amongst men, a sacrifice to God and to the Lamb, and no falsehood was found in their mouth, for they are without blemish.<p/></i><p/>The company of the Lamb are those who follow the Lamb wherever he goes. The simplest definition of a Christian is simply one who follows Jesus Christ. "Follow me!" Jesus said to Philip (<a href='B:500 1:43'>Joh 1:43</a>), and to Matthew (<a href='B:480 2:14'>Mar 2:14</a>). "Follow me!" he said to the rich young ruler (<a href='B:480 10:21'>Mar 10:21</a>), and to the unnamed disciple (<a href='B:490 9:59'>Luk 9:59</a>). When Peter asked what was to happen to John, Jesus told him not to bother about what would happen to others but to concentrate on following him (<a href='B:500 21:19-22'>Joh 21:19-22</a>). He left us an example, said Peter, that we should follow in his steps (<a href='B:670 2:21'>1Pe 2:21</a>).<p/>John calls the company of the Lamb three things:<p/>(i) They are a sacrifice to God and to the Lamb. The word for sacrifice is aparche (<a href='S:G536'>G536</a>). This really means the sacrifice of the first-fruits. The first-fruits were the best of the crop; they were a symbol of the harvest to come; and they were a symbolic dedication of the whole harvest to God. So the Christian is the best that can be offered to God; each Christian is a foretaste of the time when all the world will be dedicated to God; and the Christian is the man who has consecrated his life to God.<p/>(ii) No falsehood was found in their mouth. This is a favourite thought in Scripture. "Blessed is the man," says the Psalmist, "in whose spirit there is no deceit" (<a href='B:230 32:2'>Psa 32:2</a>). Isaiah said of the servant of the Lord: "And there was no deceit in his mouth" (<a href='B:290 53:9'>Isa 53:9</a>). Zephaniah said of the chosen remnant of the people: "Nor shall there be found in their mouth a deceitful tongue" (<a href='B:430 3:13'>Zep 3:13</a>). Peter took the words about the servant and applied them to Jesus: "No guile was found on his lips" (<a href='B:670 2:22'>1Pe 2:22</a>). There is something here which we can well understand. Just as we desire friends who are sincere, so does Jesus Christ.<p/>(iii) They are without blemish. The word is amomos (<a href='S:G299'>G299</a>) and is characteristically a sacrificial word. It describes the animal which is without flaw and so fit for an offering to God. It is interesting to note how often this word is used of the Christian. God has chosen us that we should be holy and without blame before him (<a href='B:560 1:4'>Eph 1:4</a>; compare <a href='B:580 1:22'>Col 1:22</a>). The Church must be glorious, not having spot, or wrinkle or any such thing (<a href='B:560 5:27'>Eph 5:27</a>). Peter speaks of Jesus as a Lamb without blemish and without spot (<a href='B:670 1:19'>1Pe 1:19</a>). We received life to make of it a sacrifice to God; and that which is offered to God must be without blemish.<p/>There follows the vision of the three angels, the angel with the summons to worship the true God (<a href='B:730 14:6-7'>Rev 14:6-7</a>), the angel who foretells the doom of Rome (<a href='B:730 14:8'>Rev 14:8</a>), and the angel who foretells the judgment and destruction of those who have denied their faith and worshipped the beast (<a href='B:730 14:9-12'>Rev 14:9-12</a>).<p/><b>THE SUMMONS TO THE WORSHIP OF GOD</b> (<a href='B:730 14:6-7'>Rev 14:6-7</a>)


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 And I saw another angel flying in the midst of the sky with an everlasting gospel to preach to those who dwell upon the earth and to every race and tribe and tongue and people. And he was saying with a great voice: "Fear God and give him glory, because the hour of his judgment has come, and worship him who made the heaven and the earth and the sea and the springs of waters."<p/></i><p/>One of the signs which were to precede the end was that the gospel would be preached in all the world for a witness to all nations (<a href='B:470 24:14'>Mat 24:14</a>). Here is the fulfilment of that prophecy. The angel comes with the message of the gospel to all races and tribes and tongues and peoples.<p/>The angel comes with an everlasting gospel. Everlasting could mean that the gospel is eternally valid, that even in a world which is crashing to its doom its truth still stands. It could mean that the gospel has existed from all eternity. Paul in the great doxology in Romans speaks of Jesus Christ as the revelation of the mystery which was kept secret since the world began (<a href='B:520 16:25'>Rom 16:25</a>). It could mean that the gospel is the eternal purpose of God for man. It could mean that it deals with the eternal things.<p/>It may seem strange that the angel with the gospel is followed immediately by the angels of doom. But the gospel has of necessity a double-edged quality. It is good news for those who receive it but it is judgment to those who reject it. And the condemnation of those who reject it is all the greater because they were given the chance to accept it.<p/>The words of the angel are interesting. They are a summons to worship the God who is the Creator of all things. This message is not specifically Christian but the basis of all religion. It corresponds exactly to the message which Paul and Barnabas brought to the people of Lystra, when they told them that they must "turn from these vain things to a living God who made the heaven, and the earth, and the sea, and all that is in them" (<a href='B:510 14:15'>Act 14:15</a>). H. B. Swete called this "an appeal to the conscience of untaught heathenism, incapable as yet of apprehending any other."<p/><b>THE FALL OF BABYLON</b> (<a href='B:730 14:8'>Rev 14:8</a>)<p/><i> 14:8 And another angel, a second angel, followed him saying: "Fallen, fallen is the great Babylon, who made all the nations to drink of the wine of the wrath of her fornication."<p/></i><p/>Here is prophesied the doom of Rome. Throughout the Revelation Rome is described as Babylon, a description which was common between the Testaments. The writer of 2Baruch begins his pronouncement against Rome: "I, Baruch, say this against thee, Babylon" (Baruch 11:1). When the Sibylline Oracles describe the imagined flight of Nero from Rome, they say: "Then shall flee from Babylon a king shameless and fearless, whom all mortals and the best men loathe" (Sibylline Oracles 5: 143). In the ancient days Babylon to the prophets had been the very incarnation of power and lust and luxury and sin; and to the early Jewish Christians Babylon seemed to have been reborn in the lust and luxury and immorality of Rome.<p/>The fall of Babylon to Cyrus the Persian had been one of the shattering events of ancient history. The very words which the Revelation uses are echoes of those in which the ancient prophets had foretold that fall. "Fallen, fallen is Babylon, said Isaiah, "and all the images of her gods he has shattered to the ground" (<a href='B:290 21:9'>Isa 21:9</a>). "Suddenly Babylon has fallen, said Jeremiah, "and been broken" (<a href='B:300 51:8'>Jer 51:8</a>).<p/>Babylon is said to have made all the nations drink of the wine of the wrath of her fornication. In this phrase two Old Testament conceptions have been fused into one. In <a href='B:300 51:7'>Jer 51:7</a> it is said of Babylon: "Babylon was a golden cup in the Lord's hand, making all the earth drunken; the nations drank of her wine; therefore, the nations went mad." The idea is that Babylon had been a corrupting force which had lured the nations into a kind of insane immorality. The background is the picture of a prostitute persuading a man into immorality by filling him full of wine, so that he could no longer resist her wiles. Rome has been like that, like some glittering prostitute seducing the world. The other picture is of the cup of the wrath of God. Job says of the wicked man: "Let him drink of the wrath of the Almighty" (<a href='B:220 21:20'>Job 21:20</a>). The Psalmist speaks of the wicked having to drink the dregs of the red cup in the hand of God (<a href='B:230 75:8'>Psa 75:8</a>). Isaiah speaks of Jerusalem having drunk the cup of God's fury (<a href='B:290 51:17'>Isa 51:17</a>). God instructs Jeremiah to take the wine cup of his fury and to give it to the nations to drink (<a href='B:300 25:15'>Jer 25:15</a>).<p/>We might paraphrase by saying that Babylon made the nations drink of the wine which seduces men to fornication and which brings as its consequence the wrath of God.<p/>Behind all this remains the eternal truth that the nation or the man whose influence is to evil will not escape the avenging wrath of God.<p/><b>THE DOOM OF THE MAN WHO DENIES HIS LORD</b> (<a href='B:730 14:9-12'>Rev 14:9-12</a>)


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 And another angel, a third angel, followed them saying with a great voice: "If anyone worships the beast and his image, and receives a mark upon his forehead or upon his hand, he too shall drink of the wine of the wrath of God, mingled undiluted in the cup of his wrath, and he will be tortured with fire and brimstone in the presence of the holy angels and of the Lamb. The smoke of their torture ascends for ever and ever, and those who worship the beast and his image have no rest by day or night, nor has anyone who receives the mark of his name.<p/>Here is the summons to steadfastness on the part of God's dedicated ones, who keep the commandments of God and maintain their loyalty to him.<p/></i><p/>Warning has already been given of the power of the beast and of the mark that the beast will seek to set upon all men (<a href='B:730 13:1-18'>Rev 13:1-18</a>). Now there is warning to those who fail in that time of trial.<p/>It is significant that this is the fiercest warning of all. Of all dooms, as the Revelation sees it, the doom of the apostate is worst. The reason is that the Church was battling for its very existence. If it was to continue the individual Christian must be prepared to face suffering and trial, imprisonment and death. If the individual Christian yielded, the Church died. In our day the individual Christian is still of paramount importance, but his function now is not usually to protect the faith by being ready to die for it, but to commend it by being diligent to live for it.<p/>The doom of the apostate is thought of in pictures of the most terrible judgment that ever fell on this earth--that of Sodom and Gomorrah. "Lo, the smoke of the land went up like the smoke of a furnace" (<a href='B:10 19:28'>Gen 19:28</a>). John echoes the words of Isaiah describing the day of the Lord's vengeance: "And the streams of Edom shall be turned into pitch, and her soil into brimstone; her land shall become burning pitch. Night and day it shall not be quenched; its smoke shall go up for ever. From generation to generation it shall lie waste; none shall pass through it for ever and ever" (<a href='B:290 34:8-10'>Isa 34:8-10</a>).<p/>The wicked will be destroyed in the presence of the holy angels and of the Lamb. As we have seen before, part of the blessedness of heaven was to see the suffering of the sinner in hell. As 2 Esdras has it: "There shall be shewn the furnace of hell, and opposite to it the paradise of delight" (2<a href='B:190 7:36'>Est 7:36</a>). We have the same idea in the Book of Enoch: "I will give them over (the wicked) into the hands of mine elect: as straw in the fire, so shall they burn before the face of the holy: as lead in the water shall they sink before the face of the righteous, and no trace of them shall be found any more" (Enoch 48:9). A feature of the last days will be "the spectacle of righteous judgment in the presence of the righteous" (Enoch 27:2, 3). When Chrysostom was encouraging Olympias to steadfastness, he encouraged her by promising that in due time she would see the divine torture of the persecutors, just as Lazarus saw Dives tormented in flames.<p/>We may dislike this line of thought; we may condemn it as subchristian--and indeed it is. But we have no real right to speak until we have gone through the same sufferings as the early Christians did. Many a time the heathen had looked down from the crowded seats of the arena on the sufferings of the Christians; and the early Christians were sustained by the thought that some day the divine justice of heaven would adjust the balance of earth's injustices.<p/><b>THE REST OF THE FAITHFUL SOUL</b> (<a href='B:730 14:13'>Rev 14:13</a>)<p/><i> 14:13 And I heard a voice from heaven saying: "Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord from now on. Yes, says the Spirit, they are blessed, because they rest from their labours, for their deeds follow with them."<p/></i><p/>After the terrible prophecies of the terrors to come and the terrible warnings to those who are false, there comes the gracious promise.<p/>Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord--the idea of dying in the Lord occurs more than once in the New Testament. Paul speaks of the dead in Christ (<a href='B:590 4:16'>1Th 4:16</a>) and of those who have fallen asleep in Christ (<a href='B:530 15:18'>1Co 15:18</a>). The meaning of all these phrases is those who come to the end still one with Christ. Everything was trying to separate men from Christ; but the supreme happiness was for those who came to the end still inseparable from the Master whom they loved.<p/>The promise is of rest. They will rest from their labours. Rest is never so sweet as after the most strenuous toil. As Spenser had it:<p/>Sleep after toil, port after stormy seas,<p/>Ease after war, death after life does greatly please.<p/>Their works follow with them--at first this sounds as if the Revelation is preaching salvation by works. But we have to be careful what John means by works. He speaks of the works of the Ephesians--their labour and their patience (<a href='B:730 2:2'>Rev 2:2</a>); he speaks of the works of the Thyatirans--their charity and their service and their faith (<a href='B:730 2:19'>Rev 2:19</a>). By works he means character. He is in effect saying: "When you leave this earth, all that you can take with you is yourself. If you come to the end of this life still one with Christ, you will take with you a character tried and tested like gold, which has something of his reflection in it; and, if you take with you to the world beyond a character like that, blessed are you."<p/><b>THE HARVEST OF JUDGMENT</b> (<a href='B:730 14:14-20'>Rev 14:14-20</a>)


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 And I saw and behold a white cloud, and seated on the cloud one like a son of man. On his head he had a victor's crown of gold, and in his hand he had a sharp sickle. And another angel came forth from the temple, saying with a great voice to him who was seated on the cloud: "Put in your sickle, and begin to reap, because the hour to reap has come, because the harvest of the earth is ripe and more than ripe." And he who was seated on the cloud put in his sickle upon the earth, and the earth was reaped. And another angel came from the temple which is in heaven and he too had a sharp sickle, and there came forth from the altar another angel, the angel who controls the fire, and he called with a great voice to him who had the sharp sickle saying: "Put in your sharp sickle and gather the clusters of the vine of the earth, because the grapes are ripe." So the angel put his sickle into the earth, and gathered the vintage of the earth, and cast it into the great winepress of the wrath of God. And the winepress was trodden outside the city, and blood came out of the winepress, as high as the horses' bridles, for sixteen hundred stades.<p/></i><p/>The final vision of this chapter is of judgment depicted in pictures which were very familiar to Jewish thought.<p/>It begins with the picture of the victorious figure of one like a son of man. This comes from <a href='B:340 7:13-14'>Dan 7:13-14</a>: "And I saw in the night visions, and, behold with the clouds of heaven, there came one like a son of man and he came to the ancient of days, and was presented before him. And to him was given dominion and glory and kingdom, that all peoples, nations and languages should serve him."<p/>This picture goes on to depict judgment in two metaphors familiar to Scripture.<p/>It depicts judgment in terms of harvesting. When Joel wished to say that judgment was near, he said: "Put in the sickle, for the harvest is ripe" (<a href='B:360 3:13'>Joe 3:13</a>). "When the grain is ripe, said Jesus, "at once he puts in the sickle, because the harvest has come" (<a href='B:480 4:29'>Mar 4:29</a>); and in the parable of the wheat and the tares he uses the harvest as a picture of judgment (<a href='B:470 13:24-30'>Mat 13:24-30</a>; <a href='B:470 13:37-43'>Mat 13:37-43</a>).<p/>It depicts judgment in terms of the wine press, which consisted of an upper and a lower trough connected by a channel. The troughs might be hollowed out in the rock or they might be built of brick. The grapes were put into the upper trough which was on a slightly higher level. They were then trampled with the feet and the juice flowed down the connecting channel into the lower trough. Often in the Old Testament, God's judgment is likened to the trampling of the grapes. "The Lord flouted all my mighty men in the midst of me...the Lord has trodden as in a winepress the virgin daughter of Judah" (<a href='B:310 1:15'>Lam 1:15</a>). "I have trodden the winepress alone; and from the peoples no one was with me; I trod them in my anger, and trampled them in my wrath; their life blood is sprinkled upon my garments" (<a href='B:290 63:3'>Isa 63:3</a>).<p/>Here, then, we have judgment depicted in the two familiar figures of the harvest and of the winepress. To this is added another familiar picture. The wine press is to be trodden outside the city, that is, Jerusalem. Both in the Old Testament and in the books between the Testaments there was a line of thought which held that the Gentiles would be brought to Jerusalem and judged there. Joel has a picture of all the nations gathered into the valley of Jehoshaphat and judged there (<a href='B:360 3:2'>Joe 3:2</a>; <a href='B:360 3:12'>Joe 3:12</a>). Zechariah has a picture of a last attack of the Gentiles on Jerusalem and of their judgment there (<a href='B:450 14:1-4'>Zec 14:1-4</a>).<p/>There are two difficult things in this passage. First, there is the fact that the one like a son of man reaps and also an angel reaps. We may regard the one like the son of man, the risen and victorious Lord, reaping the harvest of his own people, while the angel with the sharp sickle reaps the harvest of those destined for judgment.<p/>Second, it is said that the blood came up to the horses' bridles and spread for a distance of sixteen hundred stades or furlongs. No one has ever discovered a really satisfying explanation of this. The least unsatisfactory explanation is that sixteen hundred stades is almost exactly the length of Palestine from north to south; and this would mean that the tide of judgment would flow over and include the whole land. In that case the figure would symbolically describe the completeness of the judgment. 


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 And I saw another sign in heaven, great and wonderful--it was seven angels, with seven plagues which are the final ones, because in them the wrath of God reaches its climax. And I saw what I can only call a sea of glass intermingled with fire; and I saw standing beside the sea of glass, with the harps of God, those who had emerged victorious from their struggle with the beast and with his image and with the number of his name.<p/></i><p/>It might have been thought that John could have conveniently stopped when he had told of the reaping of judgment; but he has still much to tell--the final horrors, of the thousand year reign of the saints, of the final battle and of the final blessedness.<p/>He has told of the opening of the seven seals; he has told of the sounding of the seven trumpets; and now he must tell of the pouring out of the seven bowls of the wrath of God. His arrangement is typical of the way the apocalyptic writers tended to arrange their material in groups of seven and of three and would regard three groups of seven as standing for perfection.<p/>The scene is in heaven. Before John tells of the seven angels with the seven bowls of wrath, he has a picture of those who came through martyrdom for Christ. They are standing beside the sea which looked as if it was of glass. We have already seen this sea in <a href='B:730 4:6'>Rev 4:6</a>. This time the glass is intermingled with fire, a natural addition in the circumstances. This is a passage of judgment and fire in Scripture is often the symbol of judgment. There comes upon Egypt hail mingled with fire (<a href='B:20 9:24'>Exo 9:24</a>); the chaff is to be consumed in the fire (<a href='B:470 3:12'>Mat 3:12</a>); our God is a consuming fire (<a href='B:650 12:29'>Heb 12:29</a>). The whole scene is grimly illuminated with the lurid light of the fire of judgment which is to descend upon the earth.<p/>We are shortly to hear of the song of Moses. This is the song which Moses sang when the children of Israel had come triumphantly through the dangers of the crossing of the Red Sea. Even so, as H. B. Swete puts it, the martyrs have come safely through the sea of martyrdom and have arrived at the shore of heaven.<p/>It is said that the martyrs have emerged victorious from their contest with the forces of Antichrist. There is something very significant here. The martyrs died the most savage deaths and yet they are said to have emerged victorious. It was the very fact that they had died that made them victors; if they had remained alive by being false to their faith, they would have been the defeated. Again and again the records of the early church describe a day of martyrdom as a day of victory. In the record of the martyrdom of Saint Perpetua we read: "The day of their victory dawned, and they walked from prison to the amphitheatre as if they were walking to heaven, happy and serene in countenance." Jesus said: "Whoever would save his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it" (<a href='B:470 16:25'>Mat 16:25</a>). The real victory is not prudently to preserve life but to face the worst that evil can do and if need be to be faithful to death. "May God deny you peace," said Unamuno the Spanish mystic, "and give you glory."<p/><b>THE SONG OF THE VICTORS OF CHRIST</b> (<a href='B:730 15:3-4'>Rev 15:3-4</a>)


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 And they sing the song of Moses, the servant of God, and the song of the Lamb:<p/>Great and wonderful are your works, O Lord, God the Almighty; Just and true are your ways, King of the nations. Who shall not fear and glorify your name, O Lord? Because you alone are holy; Because all the nations will come and worship before you; Because your righteous judgments have been made plain for all to see.<p/></i><p/>The victorious martyrs sing two songs. They sing the song of the Lamb which, as we have seen, is the song which they alone could learn (<a href='B:730 14:3'>Rev 14:3</a>). They sing the song of Moses, the servant of God. This was the song which Moses sang in triumph to God after the safe crossing of the Red Sea. It is in <a href='B:20 15:1-19'>Exo 15:1-19</a>. "The Lord is my strength and my song, and he has become my salvation.... Who is like thee, 0 Lord, among the gods, who is like thee, majestic in holiness, terrible in glorious deeds, doing wonders?... The Lord will reign for ever and ever." This song was stamped upon the memory of the Jews. It was sung at every Sabbath evening service in the synagogue. At every Jewish service the recital of the Shema (compare the verb, <a href='S:H8085'>H8085</a>), the creed of Israel, was followed by two prayers--it still is--and one of these prayers refers to this song: "True it is that thou art Jehovah our God, and the God of our fathers, our King, and the King of our fathers, our Saviour, and the Saviour of our fathers, our Creator, the Rock of our Salvation, our Help and our Deliverer. Thy name is from everlasting, and there is no God beside thee. A new song did they that were delivered sing to thy name by the sea-shore; together did all praise and own thee King, and say, Jehovah shall reign, world without end! Blessed be the Lord who saveth Israel." The song of Moses commemorated the greatest deliverance in the history of God's people Israel, and the victorious martyrs, brought through the sea of persecution to the promised land of heaven, sing that song.<p/>But the martyrs have their own song. Two things stand out about it.<p/>(i) It is almost entirely composed of quotations from the Old Testament. We set down first the words in the song and below them the Old Testament passages of which they remind us.<p/>Great and wonderful are your works.<p/>O Lord, how great are thy works! (<a href='B:230 92:5'>Psa 92:5</a>); The works of the Lord are great (<a href='B:230 111:2'>Psa 111:2</a>); he has done marvellous (wonderful) things (<a href='B:230 98:1'>Psa 98:1</a>); Wonderful are thy works (<a href='B:230 139:14'>Psa 139:14</a>).<p/>Just and true are your ways.<p/>The Lord is just in all his ways, and kind in all his doings (<a href='B:230 145:17'>Psa 145:17</a>).<p/>Who shall not fear and glorify your name, O Lord<p/>All the nations thou hast made shall come and bow down before Thee, O Lord; and shall glorify thy name (<a href='B:230 86:9'>Psa 86:9</a>).<p/>You alone are holy.<p/>There is none holy like the Lord (<a href='B:90 2:2'>1Sa 2:2</a>); Let them praise thy great and terrible name! Holy is he! (<a href='B:230 99:3'>Psa 99:3</a>); Holy and terrible is his name (<a href='B:230 111:9'>Psa 111:9</a>).<p/>All the nations will come and worship before you.<p/>All the nations thou hast made shall come and bow down before thee, O Lord (<a href='B:230 86:9'>Psa 86:9</a>).<p/>Your righteous judgments are made manifest.<p/>The Lord has made known his victory, he has revealed his vindication in the sight of the nations (<a href='B:230 98:2'>Psa 98:2</a>).<p/>A passage like this lets us see how steeped in the Old Testament John was.<p/>(ii) There is another thing which must strike anyone about the song of the triumphant martyrs. There is not one single word in it about their own achievement; from beginning to end the song is a lyric outburst on the greatness of God.<p/>Heaven is a place where men forget themselves and remember only God. As R. H. Charles finely puts it: "In the perfect vision of God self is wholly forgotten." H. B. Swete puts it this way: "In the presence of God the martyrs forget themselves; their thoughts are absorbed by the new wonders that surround them; the glory of God and the mighty scheme of things in which their own sufferings form an infinitesimal part are opening before them; they begin to see the great issue of the world-drama, and we hear the doxology with which they greet their first unclouded vision of God and his works."<p/><b>THE AVENGING ANGELS</b> (<a href='B:730 15:5-7'>Rev 15:5-7</a>)


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 And after this I saw, and the temple of the tent of witness in heaven was opened, and there came out of the temple the seven angels who have the seven plagues; and they were clothed in shining white linen, and they were girt about the breasts with golden girdles. And one of the four living creatures gave to the seven angels seven golden bowls filled with the wrath of God who lives for ever and ever.<p/></i><p/>The tent of witness, or the tent of testimony, is a common title in the Old Testament for the tabernacle in the wilderness (<a href='B:40 9:15'>Num 9:15</a>; <a href='B:40 17:7'>Num 17:7</a>; <a href='B:40 18:2'>Num 18:2</a>). It is, therefore, clear that John is seeing this picture, not in terms of the Jerusalem temple, but in terms of the ancient tabernacle.<p/>It is from within the tabernacle that the seven avenging angels come forth. In the centre of the Holy Place within the tabernacle lay the Ark of the Covenant, the chest in which were contained the tables of the ten commandments, the essence of the Law. That is to say, these angels come out from the place where the Law of God rests and come to show that no man or nation can with impunity defy the Law of God.<p/>They are clothed in a shining white robe and are girt about the breasts with a golden girdle. The robes of the angels are symbolic of three things. (a) Their dress is priestly dress. The robe of white fine linen and the gold embroidered girdle about the breast is the dress of the High Priest. The High Priest might well be called God's representative among men; and these angels come forth as the avenging representatives of God. (b) Their dress is royal dress. The white linen and the high girdle are the garments of princes and of kings; and these angels come forth with the royalty of the King of kings upon them. (c) Their dress is heavenly dress. The young man at the empty tomb of Christ was clothed in a long white garment (<a href='B:480 16:5'>Mar 16:5</a>; <a href='B:470 28:3'>Mat 28:3</a>); and the angels are the inhabitants of heaven, come to execute God's decrees upon earth.<p/>It is one of the four living creatures who hands them the bowls of the wrath of God. When we were thinking about the four living creatures when they first emerged on the scene (<a href='B:730 4:7'>Rev 4:7</a>) we saw that the first was like a lion, the second like an ox, the third like a man, and the fourth like an eagle; and that, they may well symbolize all that is strongest and bravest and wisest and swiftest in nature. if that be so, it is fitting that one of them should hand the bowls of wrath to the seven angels. The bowls of wrath are to bring disasters in nature to the world; and the symbolism may well be that nature is handing itself to God to serve his purposes.<p/><b>THE UNAPPROACHABLE GLORY</b> (<a href='B:730 15:8'>Rev 15:8</a>)<p/><i> 15:8 And the temple was filled with smoke from the glory of God and from his power, and no one could enter into the temple until the seven plagues of the seven angels had been completed.<p/></i><p/>The idea of the glory of God being symbolized as smoke is common in the Old Testament. In the vision of Isaiah the whole house was filled with smoke (<a href='B:290 6:4'>Isa 6:4</a>).<p/>Further, the idea that no one could approach while the smoke was there is also common in the Old Testament. This was true both of the tabernacle and of the temple. Of the tabernacle it is said: "Then the cloud covered the tent of meeting, and the glory of the Lord filled the tabernacle. And Moses was not able to enter the tent of meeting, because the cloud abode upon it, and the glory of the Lord filled the tabernacle" (<a href='B:20 40:34-35'>Exo 40:34-35</a>). Of the dedication of Solomon's temple it is said: "And when the priests came out of the holy place, a cloud filled the house of the Lord, so that the priests could not stand to minister because of the cloud, for the glory of the Lord filled the house of the Lord" (<a href='B:110 8:10-11'>1Ki 8:10-11</a>).<p/>There is a double idea here. There is the idea that the purposes of God will often be clouded to men, for no man can see into the mind of God; and there is the idea that the holiness and the glory of God are such that man in his own right can never approach God.<p/>But R. H. Charles sees more in this passage. No man could come into the temple until the seven plagues of the seven angels have been completed. Charles sees in that a symbolic statement that no approach of man to God can halt the coming judgment. 


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<b>THE SEVEN BOWLS OF THE WRATH OF GOD</b> (<a href='B:730 16:1-21'>Rev 16:1-21</a>)<p/> It will be better to read through the whole chapter before we study it in detail. And I heard a great voice out of heaven saying to the seven angels: Go, and pour out the seven bowls of the wrath of God 2 upon the earth. The first angel went away and poured out his bowl upon the earth, and there came an outbreak of evil and malignant ulcerous sores on the men who had the mark of the beast and who worshipped his image. 3 The second poured out his bowl upon the sea; and it became blood, like the blood of a dead man, and every living thing died of the things in the sea. 4 The third poured out his bowl upon the rivers and the 5 springs of waters, and they became blood. And I heard the angel of the waters saying: You are just, you who are and who were, O Holy One, because you have delivered this 6 judgment. Because they poured out the blood of God's dedicated ones and of the prophets, you have given them blood to drink. They well deserved it. 7 And I heard the altar saying: Yes, O Lord, the Almighty, true and just are your judgments. 8 The fourth poured out his bowl upon the sun, and it was given 9 power to scorch men with fire; and men were scorched with a great scorching. And men flung their insults at the name of the God who had authority over the plagues, but they did not repent to give him glory. 10 The fifth poured out his bowl upon the throne of the beast, and his kingdom was wrapped in darkness, and men gnawed their tongues in anguish. 11 And men flung their insults at the God of heaven for their pains and their sores, but they did not repent from their deeds. 12 The sixth poured out his bowl on the great river Euphrates, and its water was dried up, that the way for the kings from the east might be prepared. 13 I saw three unclean spirits, like frogs, come from the mouth of the dragon, and the mouth of the beast, and the mouth 14 of the false prophet, for they are demonic spirits who perform signs, which go out to the kings of the whole inhabited world, to bring them together for war on the great day of God, the Almighty. 15 (Behold, I come like a thief. Blessed is he who is awake, and who keeps his garments so that he may not walk naked and so that his shame may not be exposed to the gaze of men.) 16 And they gathered them to the place that is called in Hebrew Har Maggedon. 17 The seventh poured out his bowl upon the air and there came a great voice from the Temple.. from the throne, saying: It is done! 18 And there came flashes of lightning and voices and peals of thunder, and a great earthquake such as never happened since mankind was upon the earth, so great was the earthquake. 19 And the great city was split into three parts, and the cities of the nations collapsed. And the great Babylon was remembered before God, to give her the cup of the wine of the wrath of 20 his anger. Every island fled and the mountains were not to be 21 found. Great hailstones, weighing as much as a hundredweight, descended from heaven upon men. And men hurled their insults at God for the plague of the hail, because the plague was exceedingly great.<p/></i><p/>Here we have the last terrible plagues. They have a certain connection with two things, the ten plagues in Egypt and the terrors which followed the sounding of the seven trumpets in <a href='B:730 8:1-13'>Rev 8:1-13</a>; <a href='B:730 9:1-21'>Rev 9:1-21</a>; <a href='B:730 10:1-11'>Rev 10:1-11</a>; <a href='B:730 11:1-19'>Rev 11:1-19</a>. It is worth while to set out the three lists in order to see the resemblances.<p/>First, we set out the ten plagues when Moses confronted Pharaoh with the wrath of God.<p/>(i) The water made into blood (<a href='B:20 7:20-25'>Exo 7:20-25</a>).<p/>(ii) The frogs (<a href='B:20 8:5-14'>Exo 8:5-14</a>).<p/>(iii) The lice (<a href='B:20 8:16-18'>Exo 8:16-18</a>).<p/>(iv) The flies (<a href='B:20 8:20-24'>Exo 8:20-24</a>).<p/>(v) The plague on the cattle (<a href='B:20 9:3-6'>Exo 9:3-6</a>).<p/>(vi) The boils and sores (<a href='B:20 9:8-11'>Exo 9:8-11</a>).<p/>(vii) The thunder and the hail (<a href='B:20 9:22-26'>Exo 9:22-26</a>).<p/>(viii) The locusts (<a href='B:20 10:12-19'>Exo 10:12-19</a>).<p/>(ix) The darkness (<a href='B:20 10:21-23'>Exo 10:21-23</a>).<p/>(x) The slaying of the first-born (<a href='B:20 12:29-30'>Exo 12:29-30</a>).<p/>Second, we set out the terrors which followed the sounding of the seven trumpets.<p/>(i) The coming of hail, fire and blood, through which a<p/>third part of the trees and all the green grass are<p/>withered (<a href='B:730 8:7'>Rev 8:7</a>).<p/>(ii) The flaming mountain cast into the sea, whereby one<p/>third of the sea becomes blood (<a href='B:730 8:8'>Rev 8:8</a>).<p/>(iii) The fall of the star Wormwood into the waters,<p/>whereby the waters become bitter and poisonous<p/>(<a href='B:730 8:10-11'>Rev 8:10-11</a>).<p/>(iv) The smiting of one third of the sun and the moon and<p/>the stars, whereby all is darkened (<a href='B:730 8:12'>Rev 8:12</a>).<p/>(v) The coming of the star who unlocks the pit of the<p/>abyss, from which comes the smoke out of which come<p/>the demonic locusts (<a href='B:730 9:1-12'>Rev 9:1-12</a>).<p/>(vi) The loosing of the four angels bound in the Euphrates<p/>and the coming of the demonic cavalry from the east<p/>(<a href='B:730 9:13-21'>Rev 9:13-21</a>).<p/>(vii) The announcement of the final victory of God and of<p/>the rebellious anger of the nations (<a href='B:730 11:15'>Rev 11:15</a>).<p/>Third, we set out the terrors of this chapter.<p/>(i) The coming of the ulcerous sores upon men (<a href='B:730 16:2'>Rev 16:2</a>).<p/>(ii) The sea becoming like the blood of a dead man<p/>(<a href='B:730 16:3'>Rev 16:3</a>).<p/>(iii) The rivers and fountains becoming blood (<a href='B:730 16:4'>Rev 16:4</a>).<p/>(iv) The sun becoming scorchingly hot (<a href='B:730 16:8'>Rev 16:8</a>).<p/>(v) The darkness over the kingdom of the beast, and its<p/>agony (<a href='B:730 6:10'>Rev 6:10</a>).<p/>(vi) The drying up of the Euphrates to open a way for the<p/>hordes of the kings of the east (<a href='B:730 16:12'>Rev 16:12</a>).<p/>(vii) The pollution of the air and the accompanying terrors<p/>in nature, the thunder, the earthquake, the lightning<p/>and the hail (<a href='B:730 16:17-21'>Rev 16:17-21</a>).<p/>It is easy to see how many things these lists have in common--the hail, the darkness, the blood in the waters, the ulcerous sores, the coming of the terrible hordes from beyond the Euphrates. But in the Revelation there is this difference between the terrors which follow the trumpets and the terrors which follow the pouring out of the bowls. In the former the destruction is always limited, for instance, to one third of the earth; but in the latter the destruction is complete on the enemies of God.<p/>In this final series of terrors John seems to have gathered together the horrors from all the stories of the avenging wrath of God and to have hurled them on the unbelieving world in one last terrible deluge of disaster.<p/>The Terrors Of God (<a href='B:730 16:1-11'>Rev 16:1-11</a>)<p/>The voice from the temple is the voice of God who is despatching his angelic messengers with their terrors upon men.<p/>The first terror is a plague of malignant and ulcerous sores. The word is the same as is used to describe the boils and the sores in the plague in Egypt (<a href='B:20 9:8-11'>Exo 9:8-11</a>); the pains which will follow disobedience to God (<a href='B:50 28:35'>Deu 28:35</a>); the sores of the tortured Job (<a href='B:220 2:7'>Job 2:7</a>).<p/>The second terror is the turning of the waters of the sea into blood; this and the following terror, the turning of the rivers and the springs into blood, is reminiscent of the turning of the waters of the Nile into blood in the days of the plagues in Egypt (<a href='B:20 7:17-21'>Exo 7:17-21</a>). It may be that the thought of a sea of blood came to John in Patmos; often there he must have seen the sea like blood in the dying splendour of the sunset.<p/>In Hebrew thought every natural force--the wind, the sun, the rain, the waters--had its directing angel. These angels were the ministering servants of God, placed in charge of various departments of nature. It might have been thought that the angel of the waters would have been angry to see the waters turned into blood; but even he admits the justice of God's action. In <a href='B:730 16:6'>Rev 16:6</a> the reference is to actual persecution in the Roman Empire. God's dedicated ones are the members of the Christian Church; the prophets are not the Old Testament prophets but the prophets of the Christian Church (<a href='B:530 12:28'>1Co 12:28</a>; <a href='B:510 13:1'>Act 13:1</a>; <a href='B:560 4:11'>Eph 4:11</a>), who, being the leaders of the Church, were always the first to suffer in any time of persecution. The grim punishment of those who have shed the blood of the leaders and of the rank and file of the Church is that the waters will be gone from the earth and there will be nothing but blood to drink.<p/>In <a href='B:730 16:7'>Rev 16:7</a> the voice of the altar praises the justice of the judgments of God. This may be the voice of the angel of the altar, for the altar, too, had its angel; or the idea may be this. The altar in heaven is the place where both the prayers of his people and the lives of his martyrs are offered as a sacrifice to God; and the voice of the altar may be, so to speak, the voice of Christ's praying and suffering Church praising the justice of God when his wrath falls upon their persecutors.<p/>The fourth terror is the scorching of the world by the sun; the fifth is the coming of the thick darkness, reminiscent of the darkness which came upon Egypt (<a href='B:20 10:21-23'>Exo 10:21-23</a>).<p/>In <a href='B:730 16:9'>Rev 16:9</a>; <a href='B:730 16:11'>Rev 16:11</a> and <a href='B:730 16:21'>Rev 16:21</a> we have a kind of refrain which runs through this chapter. The men on whom these terrors fell cursed God--but they did not repent, impervious alike to the goodness and to the severity of God (<a href='B:520 11:22'>Rom 11:22</a>). It is the picture of men who had no doubt of the existence of God and even saw his hand in events--and who still went their own way.<p/>We are bound to ask ourselves whether we are so very different. We do not doubt the existence of God; we know that God is interested in us and in the world which he has made; we are well aware of God's laws; we know his goodness and we know that sin has its punishment; and yet time and time again we go our own way.<p/>The Hordes From The East (<a href='B:730 16:12'>Rev 16:12</a>)<p/>This gives us a picture of the drying up of the Euphrates and the opening of a way for the hordes of the east to descend upon the world.<p/>One of the curious features of the Old Testament is the number of times when the drying up of the waters is a sign of the power of God. It was so at the Red Sea. "The Lord drove the sea back...and made the sea dry land" (<a href='B:20 14:21'>Exo 14:21</a>). It was so at Jordan, when the people under Joshua passed through the river. "All the Israelites passed over on dry ground" (<a href='B:60 3:17'>Jos 3:17</a>). In Isaiah the act of the power of God is that he will enable men to pass through the Egyptian sea dry-shod (<a href='B:290 11:16'>Isa 11:16</a>). The threat of God's vengeance in Jeremiah is: "I will dry up her sea, and make her fountain dry" (<a href='B:300 51:36'>Jer 51:36</a>). "All the depths of the Nile," says Zechariah, "shall dry up" (<a href='B:450 10:11'>Zec 10:11</a>).<p/>It may well be that here John is actually remembering a famous incident in history. Herodotus tells us (1: 191) that when Cyrus the Persian captured Babylon he did so by drying up the Euphrates. The river flows right through the centre of Babylon. When Cyrus came to Babylon her defences seemed so strong that her capture seemed impossible. Cyrus formed a brilliant plan. He left one section of his army at Babylon and another he took up the river. By a magnificent engineering feat he temporarily deflected the course of the river into a lake. The level of the river dropped and in the end the channel of the river through Babylon became a dry road; along that road there was a breach in the defences and by that road the Persians gained an entry into Babylon, and the city fell.<p/>John is using a picture which was engraved in the minds of all in his generation. The greatest enemies of Rome, the one nation she could not subjugate, were the Parthians who lived beyond the Euphrates. Their cavalry was the most dreaded force of fighting men in the world. For the cavalry of the Parthians to come sweeping across the Euphrates was a thought to strike terror into the bravest heart. Further, as we have already seen, it was to Parthia that Nero was said to have gone; and it was from Parthia that Nero redivivus was expected to come back; in other words, it was from across the Euphrates that the invasion of Antichrist was expected.<p/>The Unclean Spirits Like Frogs (<a href='B:730 16:13-16'>Rev 16:13-16</a>)<p/>These four verses are full of problems which must be solved if their meaning is to become reasonably clear.<p/>Three unclean spirits, like frogs, came out of the mouth of the dragon, the beast, and the false prophet.<p/>In the Greek there is a kind of play on words. The unclean spirits came out of the mouths of the evil forces. The mouth is the organ of speech and speech is one of the most influential forces in the world. Now the word for spirit is pneuma (<a href='S:G4151'>G4151</a>) which is also the word for breath. To say, therefore, that an evil spirit came out of a man's mouth is the same as to say that an evil breath came out of his mouth. As H. B. Swete puts it, the dragon, the beast, and the false prophet "breathed forth evil influences."<p/>It is said that the unclean spirits were like frogs.<p/>(i) Frogs are connected with plagues. One of the plagues in Egypt was a plague of frogs (<a href='B:20 8:5-11'>Exo 8:5-11</a>). "He sent frogs...which destroyed them, says the Psalmist (<a href='B:230 78:45'>Psa 78:45</a>). "Their land swarmed with frogs even in the chambers of their kings" (<a href='B:230 105:30'>Psa 105:30</a>).<p/>(ii) Frogs are unclean animals. Although not mentioned by name, they are included by definition in the list of unclean things in the water and the sea which begins in <a href='B:30 11:10'>Lev 11:10</a>. The frog stands for an unclean influence.<p/>(iii) Frogs are famous for their empty and continuous croaking--brekekekex coax coax, as Aristophanes transliterated it. "The frog, said Augustine, "is the most loquacious of vanities (Homily on Ps 77:27). The sound the frog makes is the symbol of meaningless speech.<p/>(iv) In Zoroastrianism, the Persian religion, frogs are the bringer of plagues and the agent of Ahriman, the power of darkness, in his struggle against Ormuzd, the power of light. It is fairly certain that John would know this bit of Persian lore.<p/>So, then, to say that frogs came out of the mouth of the dragon, the beast, and the false prophet is to say that their words were like plagues, were unclean, were empty futilities, and were the allies of the power of the dark.<p/>The False Prophet (<a href='B:730 16:13-16'>Rev 16:13-16</a> Continued)<p/>Our next problem is to identify the false prophet. The dragon is identified as Satan (<a href='B:730 12:3'>Rev 12:3</a>; <a href='B:730 12:9'>Rev 12:9</a>). The beast, the Roman Empire with its Caesar worship, has already appeared in <a href='B:730 13:1'>Rev 13:1</a>. But this is the first time the false prophet has appeared upon the scene. Since he appears without any explanation, we must assume that John believes that the reader already has the key to his identity.<p/>The false prophet was a figure whom God's people were well warned to expect both in the Old and in the New Testament. In the Old Testament men are forbidden to listen to the false prophet, however impressive his signs may be, and it is laid down that the punishment for the false prophet is death (<a href='B:50 13:1-5'>Deu 13:1-5</a>). It was part of the regular duty of the Sanhedrin to deal with the false prophet and to condemn him to death. The Christian Church was warned that false Christs and false prophets would arise to seduce Christ's people (<a href='B:480 13:22'>Mar 13:22</a>). H. B. Swete says of these false prophets that the name covers a whole class--"magic-vendors, religious impostors, fanatics, whether deceivers or deceived, regarded as persons who falsely interpret the mind of God. True religion has no worse enemies and Satan no better allies."<p/>The false prophet is mentioned here and in <a href='B:730 19:20'>Rev 19:20</a> and <a href='B:730 20:10'>Rev 20:10</a>; if we place two passages together, we will find a clue to his identity. <a href='B:730 19:20'>Rev 19:20</a> tells us that in the end the false prophet was captured along with the beast and he is described as the person who worked miracles before the beast, and deceived those who had the mark of the beast and worshipped its image. In <a href='B:730 13:13-14'>Rev 13:13-14</a> we have a description of the second beast, the beast from the land; it is said that this second beast does great wonders...and that he deceives those who dwell on the earth by means of those miracles which he was allowed to do in the presence of the beast. That is to say, the works of the false prophet and the works of the second beast are identical; so, then, the false prophet and the beast from the land are to be identified. We have already seen that that beast is to be identified with the provincial organisation for the enforcement of emperor worship. The false prophet, then, stands for the organization which seeks to make men worship the emperor and abandon the worship of Jesus Christ.<p/>A man who tries to introduce the worship of other gods, who tries to make men compromise with the state or with the world, who tries to seduce other men from the exclusive worship of God is always a false prophet.<p/>Armageddon (<a href='B:730 16:13-16'>Rev 16:13-16</a> Continued)<p/>__ <a href='B:730 16:1-21'>Rev 16:1-21</a> __<p/>We have still another problem to solve in this passage. The evil spirits went out and stirred up the kings of all the earth to bring them to battle. The idea of a final conflict between God and the forces of evil is an old one. We find it in <a href='B:230 2:2'>Psa 2:2</a>: "The kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers take counsel together, against the Lord, and his anointed."<p/>This battle was to take place at what the King James and Revised Standard Versions call Armageddon (<a href='S:G717'>G717</a>). Moffatt has Harmagedon. The English Revised Version has Har-Magedon. Even the name is uncertain.<p/>Magedon or Maggedon may well be connected with the name Megiddo (<a href='S:H4023'>H4023</a>). Megiddo is in the Plain of Esdraelon, which was part of the great highway from Egypt to Damascus. From the most ancient times to the time of Napoleon it was one of the great battle-grounds of the world. This was the plain where Barak and Deborah overthrew Sisera and his chariots (<a href='B:70 5:19-21'>Jdg 5:19-21</a>); where Ahaziah died by the arrows of Jehu (<a href='B:120 9:27'>2Ki 9:27</a>); where the good Josiah perished in battle with Pharaoh Necho (<a href='B:120 23:29-30'>2Ki 23:29-30</a>), a tragedy which burned itself into the Jewish mind and which the Jews never forgot (<a href='B:450 12:11'>Zec 12:11</a>). It was a battle-ground, as H. B. Swete says, "familiar to a student of Hebrew history."<p/>Armageddon (<a href='S:G717'>G717</a>) would mean the city of Megiddo; Harmagedon would mean the mountain (compare har, <a href='S:H2022'>H2022</a>) of Megiddo. It is most likely that the latter form is right, and yet the plain seems a much more likely battle-ground than the mountains. But there is another strand to add to this. When Ezekiel was describing the last struggle with Gog and Magog, he said that the final victory would be won in the mountains of Israel (<a href='B:330 38:8'>Eze 38:8</a>; <a href='B:330 38:21'>Eze 38:21</a>; <a href='B:330 39:2'>Eze 39:2</a>; <a href='B:330 39:4'>Eze 39:4</a>; <a href='B:330 39:17'>Eze 39:17</a>). It may well be that John spoke of the Mount of Megiddo to bring his story into line with the ancient prophecy.<p/>By far the most likely view is that the word is Har-Magedon, and that it describes the region near Megiddo in the Plain of Esdraelon which was perhaps the most storied of all battle-grounds in Jewish history.<p/>We must mention two other views of this strange word. Gunkel thought that it went back to the old Babylonian story of the struggle between Marduk, the creator, and Tiamat, the ancient power of chaos. But it is less than likely that John knew that story.<p/>Another view connects it with <a href='B:290 14:13'>Isa 14:13</a> where Lucifer is made to say: "Above the stars of God I will set my throne on high; I will sit on the mount of assembly." The Babylonians believed that there was a mountain called Aralu in the north country, which, rather like Olympus in Greece, was the home of the gods. Lucifer is going to take his seat among the gods; it has been suggested that the Mount of Mageddon is this mountain, and that the picture is of a last battle against the assembled gods in their own dwelling-place.<p/>Nature At War (<a href='B:730 16:17-21'>Rev 16:17-21</a>)<p/>The seventh bowl was poured out upon the air. H. B. Swete speaks of "the air that all men breathe." If the air was polluted, the very life of man was attacked at its source. Nature became at war with man. That was what happened. There came lightning and thunder and earthquake. The first century was notable for earthquakes, but John says that, whatever horror the world has known from the shaking earth, the earthquake to come will far surpass them all.<p/>The great Babylon, that is Rome, is split into three. Rome had thought that she could do as she liked with impunity--but now her sin was remembered and her fate was on the way. The mills of God may grind slowly but in the end there is no escape for sin.<p/>The earthquake sank the islands and levelled the mountains. The last of the terrible features was a deadly hail in which the hailstones weighed as much as a hundredweight. Here is another recurring feature of the manifestations of the wrath of God. A devastating hail was part of the plagues of Egypt (<a href='B:20 9:24'>Exo 9:24</a>). In the battle with the five Amorite kings at Beth-horon, under Joshua, there came a great hail upon the enemies of Israel so that more died by the hailstones than died by the sword (<a href='B:60 10:11'>Jos 10:11</a>). Isaiah speaks of the tempest of hail and the destroying storm which God in his judgment will send (<a href='B:290 28:2'>Isa 28:2</a>). Ezekiel speaks of God pleading with men with pestilence and blood, and sending an overflowing rain, and great hailstones, fire, and brimstone (<a href='B:330 38:22'>Eze 38:22</a>).<p/>The emptying of the seven bowls of wrath upon the earth ends with the chorus which has run all through the chapter. The men to whom these things happened remained impervious to any appeal of God's love or God's anger. God has given men the terrible responsibility of being able to lock their hearts against him.<p/><a href='B:730 17:1-18'>Rev 17:1-18</a>; <a href='B:730 18:1-24'>Rev 18:1-24</a> tell of the fall of Babylon. <a href='B:730 17:1-18'>Rev 17:1-18</a> is one of the most difficult in the Revelation. The best way in which to study it is first to read it as a whole; then to make certain general identifications and so to see the general line of thought in it; and finally to study it in some detail. This will involve a certain amount of repetition, but in a section like this repetition is necessary. 


text:
<b>THE FALL OF ROME</b> (<a href='B:730 17:1-18'>Rev 17:1-18</a>) One of the seven angels, who had the seven bowls, came and spoke with me. "Come here," he said, "and I will show you the judgment of the great harlot, who sits upon many waters, 2 with whom the kings of the earth committed fornication and with the wine of whose adultery those who inhabit the earth have become drunken." 3 He carried me away in the Spirit to a desert place, and I saw a woman, seated upon a scarlet beast, which was full of names which were insults to God, and which had seven heads and ten horns. 4 The woman was clothed in purple and scarlet and bedizened with gold and jewellery and pearls. She had in her hand a golden cup, full of abominations and the unclean things of her fornication. 5 And on her forehead there was written a name with a meaning which was secret except to those who knew its meaning: "Babylon, the great, the mother of the harlots and the abominations of the earth." I saw the woman, drunk 6 with the blood of God's dedicated people and with the blood of the martyrs of Jesus. When I saw her I was stricken 7 with a great wonder. The angel said to me: "Why are you moved to wonder? I will tell you the secret meaning of the woman and of the beast who bears her and has the seven 8 heads and the ten horns. The beast, which you saw, was and is not, and is about to come up from the abyss, and is on the way to destruction; and the inhabitants of the earth, whose names are not written in the Book of Life from the foundation of the world will be stricken with wonder, when they see the beast, because it was, and is not, and 9 will come. Here there is need for a mind with wisdom. The seven heads are seven hills on which the woman sits. They 10 are also seven kings. Five have fallen; one at present exists; another has not yet come, and, when he shall come, </i> <a href='B:650 11:1-40'>Heb 11:1-40</a><i> must remain for a short time. The beast, which was and is not, is itself the eighth. It proceeds from the series of the seven and it is on the way to destruction. 12 The ten heads you saw are ten kings, who have not yet received their royal authority, but they are to receive authority as kings 13 for one hour in the company of the beast. They have one mind in common and they hand over power and authority to the beast. 14 These shall make war with the Lamb, and the Lamb will conquer them, because he is the Lord of lords and the King of kings, and the called, the chosen and the loyal will share his victory." 15 And he went on to say to me: "The waters which you saw, on which the harlot is seated, are peoples and crowds and nations and tongues. 16 The ten horns, which you saw, and the beast will hate the harlot, and will make her desolate and naked, and will devour her flesh, and will burn her in the fire; for it is God who 17 has put it into their minds to perform his purpose, and to be of one mind to give their royal power to the beast, until the words of God shall be fulfilled. 18 And the woman which you saw is the great city which has dominion over the kings of the earth."<p/></i> (1) The Woman On The Beast<p/>The woman is Babylon, that is to say, Rome. The woman is said (<a href='B:730 17:1'>Rev 17:1</a>) to sit upon many waters. In this picture of Rome, John was using many of the things said by the prophets about ancient Babylon. In <a href='B:300 51:13'>Jer 51:13</a> Babylon is addressed as: "O you who dwell by many waters." The river Euphrates actually ran through the midst of Babylon; and she was also the centre of a system of irrigation canals, spreading out in every direction. When this description is applied to Rome, it does not make sense. Later in <a href='B:730 17:15'>Rev 17:15</a>, John realizes this and gives the waters a symbolic interpretation as the many nations and peoples and tongues over whom Rome rules. For this way of speaking, also, we must look to the Old Testament. When Isaiah is forecasting the invasion of Palestine by Assyria, he writes: "Therefore, behold, the Lord is bringing up against them the waters of the River, mighty and many, the king of Assyria and all his glory; and it will rise over all its channels and go over all its banks; and it will sweep on into Judah, it will overflow and pass on, reaching even to the neck" (<a href='B:290 8:7-8'>Isa 8:7-8</a>). Again, when Jeremiah is prophesying the coming invasion, he uses the same picture: "Behold, waters are rising out of the north, and shall become an overflowing torrent; they shall overflow the land, and all that fills it" (<a href='B:300 7:2'>Jer 7:2</a>).<p/>In <a href='B:730 17:4'>Rev 17:4</a> the woman is said to be clothed in purple and scarlet and decked with all kinds of ornaments. This is symbolic of the luxury of Rome and of the meretricious and lustful way in which it was used, the picture of a wealthy courtesan, decked out in all her finery to seduce men.<p/>The woman is said to have in her hand a golden cup, full of abominations. Here we have another picture of Babylon taken direct from the prophetic condemnation of the Old Testament. Jeremiah said: "Babylon was a golden cup in the Lord's hand, making all the earth drunken; the nations drank of her wine; therefore the nations went mad" (<a href='B:300 51:7'>Jer 51:7</a>). So Rome is said to hold the golden cup in which is that power of seduction which has spread immorality over all the earth.<p/>The woman is said to have a name on her forehead (<a href='B:730 17:5'>Rev 17:5</a>). In Rome the prostitutes in the public brothels wore upon their foreheads a frontlet giving their names. This is another vivid detail in the picture of Rome as the great corrupting prostitute among the nations.<p/>In <a href='B:730 17:6'>Rev 17:6</a> the woman is said to be drunk with the blood of God's dedicated people and with the blood of the martyrs. This is a reference to the persecution of the Christians in the Roman Empire. But it does more than simply stamp Rome as the great persecutor. She is glutted with slaughter; and she has revelled in that slaughter as a drunken man revels in wine.<p/>In <a href='B:730 17:16'>Rev 17:16</a> she is to be destroyed by the invasion of the ten kings. This we shall discuss more fully when we come to discuss the symbolism of the beast. It is sufficient to say just now that it foretells the destruction of Rome by the rising against her of her subject nations. It is as if to say that the great prostitute will in the end be destroyed by her lovers turning against her.<p/>(2) The Beast<p/>It is much harder to fix the meaning of the beast than of the woman, mainly because the meaning of the beast does not stay steady. The beast has a series of interconnected meanings, whose point of union is that they are all closely connected with Rome and with her empire.<p/>(i) The woman sits on the beast and the beast is filled with blasphemous names which are all insults to God (<a href='B:730 17:3'>Rev 17:3</a>). If the woman is Rome, clearly the beast is the Roman Empire. It is full of blasphemous names. This includes two things. First, it is a reference to the many gods of which the Roman Empire was full. All these names are insults to God, for they are all infringements of his supreme and unique authority. No one has the right to the name of god save only the true God. Second, it is a reference to many of the titles of the emperor. The emperor was Sebastos, or Augustus, which means to be reverenced; and reverence belongs to God alone. The emperor was divus or theios (<a href='S:G2304'>G2304</a>), which, the first in Latin and the second in Greek, mean divine; and to God alone belongs that adjective. Many of the emperors were called soter (<a href='S:G4990'>G4990</a>), saviour, which is uniquely the title of Jesus Christ. Most common of all, the emperor was in Latin dominus and in Greek kurios (<a href='S:G2962'>G2962</a>), lord, which is the very name of God.<p/>(ii) The beast has seven heads and ten horns (<a href='B:730 17:3'>Rev 17:3</a>). This is a repetition of what is said of the beast in <a href='B:730 13:1'>Rev 13:1</a>, and we shall very soon return to its meaning here.<p/>(iii) The beast was, and is not, and is about to come (<a href='B:730 17:8'>Rev 17:8</a>). This goes back to <a href='B:730 13:3'>Rev 13:3</a>; <a href='B:730 13:12'>Rev 13:12</a>; <a href='B:730 13:14'>Rev 13:14</a> and is a clear reference to the Nero redivivus legend, which is never far from the mind of John. We have already seen that the ideas of Nero resurrected and of Antichrist had become inseparably connected. Therefore, in this passage the beast stands for Antichrist.<p/>(iv) The beast has seven heads. These are doubly explained.<p/>(a) In <a href='B:730 17:9'>Rev 17:9</a> the seven heads are seven hills. Here we have an easy identification. Rome was the city upon seven hills; this once again identifies the beast with Rome.<p/>(b) The second identification is one of the riddles of the Revelation (<a href='B:730 17:10-11'>Rev 17:10-11</a>).<p/>They (the heads) are also seven kings. Five have fallen; one at present exists; another has not yet come, and, when he shall come, he must remain for a short time. The beast, which was and is not, is itself the eighth. It proceeds from the series of the seven, and it is on its way to destruction.<p/>Five have fallen. The Roman Empire began with Augustus; and the first five emperors were Augustus, Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius, and Nero. These, then, are the five who have fallen. We have already seen that after the death of Nero there were two years of chaos in which Galba, Otho and Vitellius followed each other in quick succession. They were not in any real sense emperors and cannot be included in any list.<p/>One at present exists. This must be Vespasian, the first emperor to bring back stability to the empire, after the chaos following the death of Nero; he reigned from A.D. 69-79:<p/>Another has not yet come, and, when he shall come, he must remain for a short time. Vespasian was succeeded by Titus, whose reign lasted for only two years from 79-81:<p/>The beast which was, and is not, is itself the eighth. It proceeds from the series of the seven, and is on its way to destruction. This can only mean that the emperor who followed Titus is being identified with Nero redivivus and Antichrist; and the emperor who followed Titus was Domitian.<p/>Can Domitian reasonably be identified with the evil force which Nero redivivus personified? We turn to the life of Domitian written by Suetonius the Roman biographer, remembering that Suetonius was not a Christian. Domitian, as Suetonius tells, was an object of terror and hatred to all. We get a grim picture of him at the beginning of his reign. "He used to spend hours in seclusion every day, doing nothing but catch flies and stab them with a keenly-sharpened stylus." Any psychologist would find that a curiously revealing picture. He was insanely jealous and insanely suspicious. He formed a homosexual attachment for a famous actor called Paris. One of the pupils of Paris so much resembled his teacher that it was not unreasonable to suppose that he was his son; the lad was promptly murdered. Hermogenes, the historian, wrote things which Domitian did not like; he was executed, and the scribe who had copied the manuscript was crucified. Senators were slaughtered right and left. Sallustius Lucullus, governor of Britain, was executed because he allowed a new type of lance to be called Lucullan. Domitian revived the old punishment of having his victims stripped naked, fixed by the neck in a fork of wood and beaten to death with rods. He put down a civil war that broke out in the provinces. Suetonius goes on: "After his victory in the civil war he became even more cruel, and, to discover any conspirators who were in hiding, tortured many of the opposite party by a new form of inquisition, inserting fire in their privates; and he cut off the hands of some of them."<p/>Early in his reign he appeared wearing a golden crown with the figures of Jupiter, Juno and Minerva in it, while the priest of Jupiter sat by his side. When he received back his divorced wife, he announced that she had returned to the divine couch. When he entered the amphitheatre, he loved to be greeted with the cry: "Good fortune attend our lord and his lady." He began his official edicts: "Our lord and god bids this to be done." Soon that was the only way in which he might be addressed.<p/>He was so suspicious that he never gave prisoners a hearing in private, and, even when he heard them with his guards present, they were chained. He so feared for his own life that he had the passages and colonnades through which he moved tiled with phlengite stone, which is like a mirror, so that he could see anyone who was moving behind him. Finally, on 18 September, A.D. 96, he was murdered in the bloodiest circumstances.<p/>To all this we may add a final fact; it was Domitian who first made Caesar worship compulsory and who was, therefore, responsible for unloosing the flood-tides of persecution on the Christian Church.<p/>It might well be that John saw in Domitian the reincarnation of Nero. Others did precisely the same. Juvenal spoke of Rome being "enslaved to a bald-headed Nero" (Domitian was bald) and was exiled and finally murdered for his temerity. Tertullian called Domitian "a man of Nero's type of cruelty, and "a sub-Nero, a verdict which Eusebius repeated.<p/>The one difficulty is that it makes it look as if John wrote in the reign of Vespasian; and we know that John in fact wrote under Domitian. Two possibilities may explain this. John may have written this particular vision years before in the time of Vespasian, lived to see it come terribly true and incorporated it in his final draft of the Revelation. Or he may have written it all in the reign of Domitian, and, projected himself back into the time of Vespasian to trace in retrospect the terrible lines that history had taken.<p/>However we explain it, the picture is satisfied if we hold that John saw in Domitian the reincarnation of Nero, the supreme embodiment of Roman wickedness and defiance of God; we need not go on to say that he identified Domitian with Antichrist.<p/>There remains one problem in identification and it is less susceptible of definite solution than the others. In <a href='B:730 17:12-17'>Rev 17:12-17</a> it is said that the ten horns are ten kings who have not yet received their power. They will receive it, and when they do, two things will happen. They will unanimously agree to hand over their own power to the beast; and with him they will rise against the harlot and make war with the Lamb and finally be defeated.<p/>By far the likeliest interpretation of this is that the ten kings are the satraps of the Parthian hosts, who will make common cause with Nero redivivus and under him fight the last battle in which Rome will be destroyed and the Lamb will subdue every hostile force in the universe.<p/>The City Which Became A Harlot (<a href='B:730 17:1-2'>Rev 17:1-2</a>)<p/>In these two verses Rome is described as the great harlot. More than once in the Old Testament heathen and disobedient cities are described as harlots. It is thus that Nahum describes Nineveh, when he speaks of the multitude of the whoredoms of the well-favoured harlot (<a href='B:410 3:4'>Nah 3:4</a>). It is thus that Isaiah describes Tyre (<a href='B:290 23:16-17'>Isa 23:16-17</a>). Even Jerusalem can be so described. "How the faithful city has become a harlot!" mourns Isaiah (<a href='B:290 1:21'>Isa 1:21</a>). And the charge of Ezekiel is: "You trusted in your beauty and played the harlot" (<a href='B:330 16:15'>Eze 16:15</a>).<p/>It is a way of speaking which is strange to modern ears; but there is great symbolism behind it.<p/>(i) Behind it is the idea of God as the lover of the souls of his people. Primasius, the old Latin commentator, says that Rome is called a harlot, because "she left her Creator and prostituted herself with devils." When we turn our backs upon God, it is not so much a sin against law as a sin against love.<p/>(ii) There is another idea behind this. Beckwith suggests that Rome is called the great harlot, because she is "an allurement to godlessness and immorality." The sin of the harlot is not only that she sins herself, but also that she deliberately persuades others into sin. God will never hold guiltless the man who seduces others into sin.<p/>The Vision In The Wilderness (<a href='B:730 17:3'>Rev 17:3</a>)<p/>John says that he was carried away in the Spirit to a desert place.<p/>The prophet is a man who lives in the Spirit. "The Spirit, said Ezekiel, "lifted me up and took me away" (<a href='B:330 3:14'>Eze 3:14</a>). "The Spirit lifted me up between earth and heaven, and brought me in visions of God to Jerusalem" (<a href='B:330 8:3'>Eze 8:3</a>). "And the Spirit lifted me up, and brought me in the vision by the Spirit of God into Chaldea to the exiles" (<a href='B:330 11:24'>Eze 11:24</a>). It is not that the Spirit physically moves a man about from place to place; but, when a man lives in the Spirit, his horizons are widened; he may live in time, but he becomes a spectator of eternity. The prophets could see the trends of history ahead because they lived in the Spirit.<p/>One of the ever-recurring features of the Bible story is that it was in the desert that the great men of God saw their visions. It was in the wilderness that Moses met God (<a href='B:20 3:1'>Exo 3:1</a>). It was when he had gone a day's journey into the wilderness that Elijah met God and regained his courage and his faith (<a href='B:110 19:4'>1Ki 19:4</a>). It was in the wilderness that John the Baptist grew to manhood and it was there that he received his message from God (<a href='B:490 1:80'>Luk 1:80</a>). It was to the wilderness that Jesus went to settle the way he would take before he set out to preach and teach and die for men and for God (<a href='B:470 4:1'>Mat 4:1</a>).<p/>It may well be that there is not enough quietness in our lives for us to receive the message which God is eager to give.<p/>The Great Harlot (<a href='B:730 17:4-5'>Rev 17:4-5</a>)<p/>These verses give us a vivid picture of the great harlot. She is clothed in purple and scarlet, the royal colours, the colours of luxury and splendour. She is bedecked with gold and precious stones and pearls. She has the golden cup with which she makes her lovers drunk. She has the harlot's frontlet on her forehead with her name. The name is a mystery. In Greek a musterion (<a href='S:G3466'>G3466</a>) is not necessarily something abstruse; it is something quite unintelligible to the uninitiated but crystal clear to the initiated. The mystery in this case is that Babylon means Rome; the thing which the stranger does not know, but which the Christian reader does know, is that while the story is told under the name of Babylon everything relates to Rome.<p/>(i) John may have got this picture from the temple prostitutes of Asia Minor. One of the strange features of ancient religion was that to many temples there were attached sacred prostitutes; there were, for instance, a thousand of them attached to the Temple of Aphrodite at Corinth. To have intercourse with them was an act of worship which paid homage to the life force.<p/>(ii) John possibly had in mind the most notorious of all the Roman Empresses, Messalina. She was the wife of the weak and almost imbecile Claudius; and it is related of her that at nights she would go down to the public brothels and serve there like any common prostitute. Juvenal paints the picture in vivid terms (Satire 6: 114-132): "Hear what Claudius endured. As soon as his wife perceived that her husband was asleep, this august harlot was shameless enough to prefer a common mat to the imperial couch. Assuming a night-cowl, and attended by a single maid she issued forth; then, having concealed her raven locks under a light-coloured peruque, she took her place in a brothel reeking with long-used coverlets. Entering an empty cell reserved for herself, she there took her stand, under the feigned name of Lycisca, her nipples bare and gilded, and exposed to view the womb that bore thee, O nobly-born Britannicus. Here she graciously received all comers, asking from each his fee; and when at length the keeper dismissed the girls, she remained to the very last before closing her cell, and with passion still raging hot within her went sorrowfully away. Then, exhausted by men but unsatisfied, with soiled cheeks, and begrimed by the smoke of the lamps, she took back to the imperial pillow all the odours of the stews."<p/>When even an empress stooped to this, is there any wonder that John thought of Rome as a harlot?<p/>The cup of the harlot Rome is full of unclean things. Lest it be thought that this is the verdict of some narrow-minded Christian, let it be remembered that Tacitus called Rome "the place into which from all over the world all atrocious and shameful things flow and where they are most popular, and Seneca called her "a filthy sewer." John's picture of Rome is actually restrained in comparison with some of the pictures which the Romans themselves drew. This was the civilization into which Christianity came; and it was out of this that men were converted to chastity. We may well speak of the miracles of the Cross.<p/>Drunk With The Blood Of The Saints And The Martyrs (<a href='B:730 17:6'>Rev 17:6</a>)<p/>As we have already pointed out in the general introduction to this chapter, the way in which John describes Roman persecution is very significant. He says that Rome is drunk with the blood of the saints and the martyrs. The implication is that Rome did not simply persecute the Christians as a legal necessity but took fiendish delight in hounding Christians to death.<p/>No doubt John is thinking of the persecution which took place under Nero. The Neronic persecution sprang from the great fire in A.D. 64 which burned for a week and devastated Rome. The people of Rome were convinced that the fire was no accident; they were also convinced that those who tried to extinguish it were hindered and that when it died down, it was deliberately rekindled; and they were also convinced that the instigator of the fire was Nero. Nero had a passion for building, and the people believed that he had deliberately burned down the city in order to rebuild it.<p/>Nero had to find a scapegoat to divert suspicion from himself; and he fixed on the Christians. This was the first great persecution and in many ways the most savage of all. We quote Tacitus' description in full because it is one of the few passages in pagan literature where the name of Christ occurs (Tacitus: Annals 15: 44):<p/>All human efforts, all the lavish gifts of the emperor (Nero), and<p/>the propitiations of the gods, did not banish the sinister belief<p/>that the conflagration was the result of an order. Consequently to<p/>get rid of the report, Nero fastened the guilt and inflicted the<p/>most exquisite tortures on a class hated for their abominations,<p/>called Christians by the populace. Christus, from whom the name<p/>had its origin, suffered the extreme penalty during the reign of<p/>Tiberius, at the hands of one of our procurators, Pontius Pilatus,<p/>and a most mischievous superstition, thus checked for the moment,<p/>again broke out not only in Judaea, the first source of the evil,<p/>but even in Rome, where all things hideous and shameful from every<p/>part of the world find their centre and become popular.<p/>Accordingly, an arrest was first made of all who pleaded guilty;<p/>then, upon their information, an immense multitude was convicted,<p/>not so much of the crime of firing the city, as of hatred of<p/>mankind. Mockery of every sort was added to their deaths. Covered<p/>with the skins of beasts, they were torn by dogs, and perished, or<p/>were nailed to crosses, or were doomed to the flames and burned,<p/>to serve as a nightly illumination when daylight had expired....<p/>Hence, even for criminals who deserved extreme and exemplary<p/>punishment, there arose a feeling of compassion, for it was not,<p/>as it seemed for the public good, but to glut one man's cruelty<p/>that they were being destroyed.<p/>The Reincarnation Of Evil (<a href='B:730 17:7-11'>Rev 17:7-11</a>)<p/>In the introduction to this chapter we have already seen that the likeliest explanation is that John is projecting himself backwards into the reign of Vespasian. The five who have been are Augustus, Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius, Nero; the one who is is Vespasian; the one who is to come and who is to last for only a very short time is Titus; the one who is to be the equivalent of the head wounded and restored, who is to be Nero all over again, is Domitian, the man of savage cruelty. Lying behind all this imagery are three permanent truths.<p/>(i) Even when Nero died, his wickedness lived on and John sees it re-emerging in Domitian, the new Nero. Everyone leaves something behind in this world. It may be a memory which is a helper of all that is fine and good; it may be an evil influence which lays a trail of trouble for many generations to come. Every man's life points somewhere; he must see that it points to goodness and to God.<p/>(ii) In <a href='B:730 17:8'>Rev 17:8</a> we read that those whose names have not been written in the Book of Life will be dazzled at the coming of the evil one. There are always those who can be dazzled by evil. The one way to avoid its fascination is to keep our eyes on Jesus Christ. Then evil is seen for what it is.<p/>(iii) In <a href='B:730 17:11'>Rev 17:11</a> we read that the beast is on his way to destruction. However great the success of evil may be, it has in it the seeds of self-destruction. He who allies himself with evil has chosen the losing side.<p/>The Purposes Of Man And The Purposes Of God (<a href='B:730 17:12-18'>Rev 17:12-18</a>)<p/>This passage speaks of the ten kings whom the ten horns represent. It is likely that the ten kings are the satraps of the East and of Parthia whom the resurrected Nero, the Antichrist, is to lead against Rome. Or they may simply stand for all the world powers which in the end will turn against Rome and destroy her. We note certain things in this passage.<p/>(i) In <a href='B:730 17:14'>Rev 17:14</a> we read that these world powers war with the Lamb but the Lamb destroys them; and the called, the chosen and the loyal share in the victory of the Lamb. One of the great conceptions of Jewish thought was that the saints and the martyrs would share in God's final triumph. "Sinners, says Enoch, "shall be delivered into the hands of the righteous" (Enoch 91:12). "Be hopeful, ye righteous, says Enoch again, "for suddenly shall the sinners perish before you, and ye shall have lordship over them according to your desires" (Enoch 96:1). In a grim passage the same book says: "Woe to you who love the deeds of unrighteousness.... Know that you shall be delivered into the hands of the righteous, and they shall cut off your necks and slay you, and have no mercy upon you" (Enoch 98:12). In the Wisdom of Solomon there is the same promise to those who have lived and suffered and died for God. "Having borne a little chastening, they shall receive great good, because God made trial of them and found them worthy of himself. As gold in the furnace he proved them, and as a whole burnt-offering he accepted them. And in the time of their visitation they shall shine forth, and as sparks among the stubble they shall run to and fro. They shall judge nations and have dominion over peoples" (Wis_3:5-8). It is no doubt this belief that was in the minds of James and John when they came and asked Jesus for the places on his right and his left when he entered into his kingdom (<a href='B:470 20:21'>Mat 20:21</a>; <a href='B:480 10:37'>Mar 10:37</a>).<p/>This Jewish thought has two aspects, one noble and one subchristian. The subchristian one is that there were times when this became nothing other than a thirst for vengeance; but who shall blame the persecuted for longing for the day when the world's roles will be reversed in eternity? The noble idea is that the saints and martyrs will aid Christ to win his triumph and share in the glory. It is an affirmation that for us, too, after the Cross comes the crown.<p/>(ii) <a href='B:730 17:16'>Rev 17:16</a> gives a picture of the ten horns rising violently against the harlot who had been their mistress. They will devour her flesh. In the Old Testament that is the action of a most savage and powerful enemy. It is the complaint of the Psalmist that the wicked ate up his flesh (<a href='B:230 27:2'>Psa 27:2</a>; King James Version). The wicked in Israel, with their grasping oppression, eat the flesh of the people of God (<a href='B:400 3:3'>Mic 3:3</a>). This is a picture of terrible vengeance. They will burn her in the fire. This is the punishment for the most heinous sin (<a href='B:30 20:14'>Lev 20:14</a>), and above all the punishment for the daughter of a priest who has been guilty of sexual immorality (<a href='B:30 21:9'>Lev 21:9</a>).<p/>It is to be noted that the harlot's previous lovers turned against her. Evil has in it a divisive power.<p/>(iii) In <a href='B:730 17:12-13'>Rev 17:12-13</a> we read of the ten kings making common purpose with the beast; and in <a href='B:730 17:17'>Rev 17:17</a> we read that God put this into their hearts that his purposes might be carried out and his words fulfilled. Here is a strange thing. These evil powers thought they were working out their own purposes but they were, in fact, working out the purposes of God. R. H. Charles says: "Even the wrath of men is made to praise God." The truth behind this is that God never loses control of human affairs. In the last analysis God is always working things together for good. 


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 After these things I saw another angel coming down from heaven. He had great authority and the earth was lit up by his glory. He cried with a loud voice saying: "Fallen, fallen is Babylon the great. She has become a dwelling-place of demons, and a stronghold of every unclean spirit, and a stronghold of every unclean and hated bird, because the nations have drunk of the wine of the wrath of her fornication, and the kings of the earth have committed fornication with her, and the merchants of the earth have grown rich with the wealth of her wantonness."<p/></i><p/>In this chapter we have a form of prophetic literature common in the prophetic books of the Old Testament. This is what is called "A Doom Song," the doom song of the city of Rome.<p/>We quote certain Old Testament parallels. In <a href='B:290 13:19-22'>Isa 13:19-22</a> we have the doom song of ancient Babylon:<p/>And Babylon, the glory of kingdoms, the splendour and pride of<p/>the Chaldeans, will be like Sodom and Gomorrah when God<p/>overthrew them. It will never be inhabited or dwelt in for all<p/>generations; no Arab will pitch his tent there, no shepherds will<p/>make their flocks lie down there. But wild beasts will lie down<p/>there, and its houses will be full of howling creatures; there<p/>ostriches will dwell, and there satyrs will dance. Hyenas will<p/>cry in its towers, and jackals in the pleasant palaces; its time<p/>is close at hand and its days will not be prolonged.<p/>In <a href='B:290 34:11-15'>Isa 34:11-15</a> we have the doom song of Edom:<p/>But the hawk and the porcupine shall possess it, the owl and the<p/>raven shall dwell in it. He shall stretch the line of confusion<p/>over it, and the plummet of chaos over its nobles.... Thorns<p/>shall grow over its strongholds, nettles and thistles in its<p/>fortresses. It shall be the haunt of jackals, an abode for<p/>ostriches. And wild beasts shall meet with hyenas, the satyr<p/>shall cry to his fellow; yea, there shall the night hag alight,<p/>and find for herself a resting place. There shall the owl nest<p/>and lay and hatch and gather her young in her shadow; yea, there<p/>shall the kites be gathered, each one with her mate.<p/><a href='B:300 50:39'>Jer 50:39</a> and <a href='B:300 51:37'>Jer 51:37</a> are part of doom songs of Babylon:<p/>Therefore wild beasts shall dwell with hyenas in Babylon, and<p/>ostriches shall dwell in her; she shall be peopled no more for<p/>ever, nor inhabited for all generations. And Babylon shall become<p/>a heap of ruins, the haunt of jackals, a horror and a hissing<p/>without inhabitant.<p/>In <a href='B:430 2:13-15'>Zep 2:13-15</a> we have the doom song of Nineveh:<p/>And he will make Nineveh a desolation, a dry waste like the<p/>desert. Herds shall lie down in the midst of her, all the beasts<p/>of the field; the vulture and the hedgehog shall lodge in her<p/>capitals; the owl shall hoot in the window, the raven croak on<p/>the threshold; for her cedar work will be laid bare. This is the<p/>exultant city that dwelt secure, that said to herself, "I am and<p/>there is none else." What a desolation she has become, a lair for<p/>wild beasts! Every one who passes by her hisses and shakes his<p/>fist.<p/>In spite of their grim foretelling of ruin these passages are all great poetry of passion. It may be that here we are far from the Christian doctrine of forgiveness; but we are very close to the beating of the human heart.<p/>In our passage the angel charged with the message of doom comes with the very light of God upon him. No doubt John was thinking of <a href='B:330 43:1-2'>Eze 43:1-2</a>: "He brought me to the gate, the gate facing east; and behold the glory of the God of Israel came from the east; and the sound of his coming was like the sound of many waters; and the earth shone with his glory." H. B. Swete writes of this angel: "So recently he has come from the Presence that in passing he brings a broad belt of light across the dark earth."<p/>So certain is John of the doom of Rome, that he speaks of it as if it had already happened.<p/>We note one other point. Surely the most dramatic part of the picture is the demons haunting the ruins. The pagan gods banished from their reign disconsolately haunt the ruins of the temples where once their power had been supreme.<p/><b>COME YE OUT!</b> (<a href='B:730 18:4-5'>Rev 18:4-5</a>)


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 I heard another voice from heaven saying: "Come out, my people, from her, lest you become partners in her sins, and lest you share in her plagues, because her sins are piled as high as heaven, and God has remembered her unrighteous deeds."<p/></i><p/>The Christians are bidden come out of Rome before the day of destruction comes, lest, sharing in her sins, they also share in her doom. H. B. Swete says that this call to come out rings through Hebrew history. God is always calling upon his people to cut their connection with sin and to stand with him and for him.<p/>It was the call which came to Abraham: "Now the Lord said to Abraham, Go from your country, and your kindred, and your father's house, to the land that I will show you" (<a href='B:10 12:1'>Gen 12:1</a>). It was the call that came to Lot, before the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah: "Up, get out of this place, for the Lord is about to destroy the city" (<a href='B:10 19:12-14'>Gen 19:12-14</a>). It was the call that came to Moses in the days of the wickedness of Korah, Dathan and Abiram: "Get away from about the dwelling of Korah, Dathan and Abiram.... Depart, I pray you, from the tents of these wicked men" (<a href='B:40 16:23-26'>Num 16:23-26</a>). "Go forth from Babylon, said Isaiah, "flee from Chaldea" (<a href='B:290 48:20'>Isa 48:20</a>). "Flee from the midst of Babylon, said Jeremiah, "and go out of the land of the Chaldeans" (<a href='B:300 50:8'>Jer 50:8</a>). "Flee from the midst of Babylon, let every man save his life" (<a href='B:300 51:6'>Jer 51:6</a>). "Go out of the midst of her people. Let every man save his life from the fierce anger of the Lord" (<a href='B:300 51:45'>Jer 51:45</a>). It is a cry which finds its echo in the New Testament. Paul writes to the Corinthians: "Do not be mismated with unbelievers. For what partnership have righteousness and iniquity? Or what fellowship has light with darkness? What accord has Christ with Belial?" (<a href='B:540 6:14-15'>2Co 6:14-15</a>). "Do not participate in another man's sins; keep yourself pure" (<a href='B:610 5:22'>1Ti 5:22</a>).<p/>Swete well points out that this cry and challenge do not involve a coming out at a definite moment. They imply a certain "aloofness of spirit maintained in the very heart of the world's traffic." They describe the essential apartness of the Christian from the world. The commonest word for the Christian in the New Testament is the Greek hagios (<a href='S:G40'>G40</a>), whose basic meaning is different. The Christian is not conformed to the world but transformed from the world (<a href='B:520 12:2'>Rom 12:2</a>). It is not a question of retiring from the world; it is a question of living differently within the world.<p/><b>THE DOOM OF PRIDE</b> (<a href='B:730 18:6-8'>Rev 18:6-8</a>)


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 Repay her in the coin with which she paid others; and repay her double for her deeds. Mix her a double draught in the cup in which she mixed her draughts. In proportion to her boasting and her wantonness give her torture and grief, for she says in her heart: "I sit a queen: I am not a widow; grief is something that I will never see." Because of this her plagues will come upon her in one day--pestilence and grief and famine and she will be burned with fire, because the Lord God who judges her is strong.<p/></i><p/>This passage speaks in terms of punishment. But the instruction to exact vengeance on Rome is not an instruction to men; it is an instruction to the angel, the divine instrument of justice. Vengeance belongs to God, and to God alone. We have here two truths which we must remember.<p/>(i) There is in life a law by which a man sows that which he reaps. Even in the Sermon on the Mount we find an expression of that law: "The measure you give will be the measure you get" (<a href='B:470 7:2'>Mat 7:2</a>). The double punishment and the double reward come from the fact that frequently in Jewish law anyone responsible for loss or damage had to repay it twice over (<a href='B:20 22:4'>Exo 22:4</a>; <a href='B:20 22:7'>Exo 22:7</a>; <a href='B:20 22:9'>Exo 22:9</a>). "O daughter of Babylon, you devastator!" says the Psalmist, "happy shall he be who requites you with what you have done to us" (<a href='B:230 137:8'>Psa 137:8</a>). "Requite her according to her deeds, says Jeremiah of Babylon, "Do to her according to all that she has done; for she has proudly defied the Lord, the Holy One of Israel" (<a href='B:300 50:29'>Jer 50:29</a>). There is no getting away from the fact that punishment follows sin, especially if that sin has involved the cruel treatment of fellowmen.<p/>(ii) We meet here the stern truth that all pride will one day be humiliated. Rome's supreme sin has been pride. It is in Old Testament terms that John speaks. He reproduces the ancient judgment on Babylon:<p/>You said, "I shall be mistress for ever, so that you did not lay<p/>these things to heart or remember their end. Now therefore hear<p/>this, you lover of pleasures, who sit securely, who say in your<p/>heart, "I am, and there is no one besides me; I shall not sit<p/>as a widow or know the loss of children": These two things<p/>shall come to you in a moment, in one day; the loss of children<p/>and widowhood shall come upon you in full measure, in spite of<p/>your many sorceries and the great power of your enchantments.<p/>Nothing rouses such condemnation as pride, Isaiah speaks grimly: "Because the daughters of Zion are haughty, and walk with outstretched necks, glancing wantonly with their eyes, mincing along as they go, tinkling with their feet the Lord will smite with a scab the heads of the daughters of Zion" (<a href='B:290 3:16-17'>Isa 3:16-17</a>). Tyre is condemned because she has said: "I am perfect in beauty" (<a href='B:330 27:3'>Eze 27:3</a>).<p/>There is a sin which the Greek called hubris (<a href='S:G5196'>G5196</a>), which is that arrogance, that comes to feel that it has no need of God. The punishment for that sin is ultimate humiliation.<p/><b>THE LAMENT OF THE KINGS</b> (<a href='B:730 18:9-10'>Rev 18:9-10</a>)


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 The kings of the earth, who committed fornication with her and who shared in her wantonness, will weep and lament over her, when they will see the smoke of her burning, while they stand afar off because of the fear of her torture, while they say: "Alas! Alas! for the city that seemed so strong, for Babylon the strong city! for in one hour your judgment is come."<p/></i><p/>In the rest of this chapter we have the dirges for Rome; the dirge sung by the kings (<a href='B:730 18:9-10'>Rev 18:9-10</a>), the dirge sung by the merchants (<a href='B:730 18:11-16'>Rev 18:11-16</a>), the dirge sung by the shipmasters and the sailors (<a href='B:730 18:17-19'>Rev 18:17-19</a>). Again and again we hear of the greatness, the wealth and the wanton luxury of Rome.<p/>We may well ask whether John's indictment is justified or whether he is merely a fanatic shouting doom without any real justification. If we wish to find an account of the luxury and the wantonness of Rome we will find it in such books as Roman Society from Nero to Marcus Aurelius, by Samuel Dill, Roman Life and Manners, by Ludwig Friedlander, and especially in the Satires of Juvenal, the Lives of the Caesars by Suetonius, and the works of Tacitus, themselves Romans and themselves appalled by the things about which they wrote. These books show that nothing John could say of Rome could be an exaggeration.<p/>There is a saying in the Talmud that ten measures of wealth came down into the world and that Rome received nine and all the rest of the world only one. One famous scholar said that in modern times we are babes in the matter of enjoyment compared with the ancient world; and another remarked that our most extravagant luxury is poverty compared with the prodigal magnificence of ancient Rome.<p/>In that ancient world there was a kind of desperate competition in ostentation. It was said of Caligula that "he strove, most of all to realize what men deemed impossible, and it was said that "the desire of the incredible" was the great characteristic of Nero. Dill says: "The senator who paid too low a rent, or rode along the Appian or Flaminian Way with too scanty a train, became a marked man and immediately lost caste."<p/>In this first century the world was pouring its riches into the lap of Rome. As Dill has it: "The long peace, the safety of the seas, and the freedom of trade, had made Rome the entrepot for the peculiar products and delicacies of every land from the British Channel to the Ganges." Pliny talks of a meal in which in one dish India was laid under contribution, in another Egypt, Cyrene, Crete and so forth. Juvenal speaks of the seas peopled with great keels and of greed luring ships on expeditions to every land. Aristides has a purple passage on the way in which things flowed into Rome. "Merchandise is brought from every land and sea, everything that every season begets, and every country produces, the products of rivers and lakes, the arts of the Greeks and the barbarians, so that, if anyone were to wish to see all these things, he would either have to visit the whole inhabited world to see them--or to visit Rome; so many great ships arrive from all over the world at every hour, at every season, that Rome is like some common factory of the world, for you may see such great cargoes from the Indies, or, if you wish, from the blessed Arabias, that you might well conjecture that the trees there have been stripped naked; clothing from Babylon, ornaments from the barbarian lands, everything flows to Rome; merchandise, cargoes, the products of the land, the emptying of the mines, the product of every art that is and has been, everything that is begotten and everything that grows. If there is anything you cannot see at Rome, then it is a thing which does not exist and which never existed."<p/>The money possessed and the money spent was colossal. One of Nero's freedman could regard a man with a fortune of 652,000 British pounds as a pauper. Apicius squandered a fortune of 1,000,000 British pounds in refined debauchery, and committed suicide when he had only 100,000 British pounds left because he could not live on such a pittance. In one day Caligula squandered the revenues of three provinces amounting to 100,000 British pounds and in a single year scattered broadcast in prodigal profusion 20,000,000 British pounds. Nero declared that the only use of money was to squander it, and in a very few years he squandered 18,000,000 British pounds. At one banquet of his the Egyptian roses alone cost 35,000 British pounds.<p/>Let the Roman historian Suetonius describe his emperors, and remember that this is not a Christian preacher but a pagan historian. Of Caligula he writes: "In reckless extravagance he outdid the prodigals of all times in ingenuity, inventing a new sort of baths and unnatural varieties of food and feasts; for he would bathe in hot or cold perfumed oils, drink pearls of great price dissolved in vinegar, and set before his guests loaves and meats of gold." He even built galleys whose sterns were studded with pearls. Of Nero Suetonius tells us that he compelled people to set before him banquets costing 20,000 British pounds. "He never wore the same garment twice. He played at dice for 2,000 British pounds per point. He fished with a golden net drawn by cords woven of purple and scarlet threads. It is said that he never made a journey with less than a thousand carriages, with his mules shod with silver."<p/>Drinking pearls dissolved in vinegar was a common ostentation. Cleopatra is said to have dissolved and drunk a pearl worth 80,000 British pounds. Valerius Maximus at a feast set a pearl to drink before every guest, and he himself, Horace tells, swallowed the pearl from Metalla's ear-ring dissolved in wine that he might be able to say that he had swallowed a million sesterces at a gulp.<p/>It was an age of extraordinary gluttony. Dishes of peacocks' brains and nightingales' tongues were set before the guests at banquets. Vitellius, who was emperor for less than a year, succeeded in spending 7,000,000 British pounds mainly on food. Suetonius tells of his favourite dish: "In this he mingled the livers of pike, the brains of pheasants and peacocks, the tongues of flamingoes, and the milk of lampreys, brought by his captains and triremes from the whole empire from Parthia to the Spanish strait." Petronius describes the scenes at Trimalchio's banquet: "One course represented the twelve signs of the zodiac.... Another dish was a large boar, with baskets of sweetmeats hanging from its tusks. A huge bearded hunter pierced its side with a hunting knife, and forthwith from the wound there issued a flight of thrushes which were dexterously captured in nets as they flew about the room. Towards the end of the meal the guests were startled by strange sounds in the ceiling and a quaking of the whole apartment. As they raised their eyes the ceiling suddenly opened, and a great circular tray descended, with a figure of Priapus, bearing all sorts of fruit and bon-bons."<p/>In the time when John was writing a kind of insanity of wanton extravagance, to which it is very difficult to find any parallel in history, had invaded Rome.<p/><b>(1) THE LAMENT OF THE MERCHANTS</b> (<a href='B:730 18:11-16'>Rev 18:11-16</a>)


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 And the merchants of the earth will weep and lament over her, for no one buys their cargo any more, the cargo of gold and of silver and of precious stones and of pearls, of fine linen and of purple and of silk and of scarlet, all kinds of thyine wood, all kinds of articles of ivory, all kinds of articles of costly wood, and of bronze and of iron and of marble, and cinnamon and perfume and incense, and myrrh, and frankincense and wine and oil, and fine flour, and wheat and cattle and sheep, horses and chariots and slaves, the souls of men.<p/>The ripe fruit your soul desired has gone from you, and all your delicacies and your splendours have perished, never again to be found. The merchants who dealt in these wares, who grew wealthy from their trade with her, shall stand afar off because of the fear of her torture, weeping and grieving. "Alas! Alas!" they shall say, "for the great city, for the city which was clothed in fine linen and purple and scarlet, the city which was decked with gold and with precious stones and with pearls, for in one hour so much wealth is desolated!"<p/></i><p/>The lament of the kings and the merchants should be read along with the lament over Tyre in <a href='B:330 26:1-21'>Eze 26:1-21</a>; <a href='B:330 27:1-36'>Eze 27:1-36</a> for they have many features in common.<p/>The lament of the merchants is purely selfish. All their sorrow is that the market from which they drew so much wealth is gone. It is significant that both the kings and the merchants stand afar off and watch. They stretch out no hand to help Rome in her last agony; they were never bound to her in love; their only bond was the luxury she desired and the trade it brought to them.<p/>We will learn still more of the luxury of Rome, if we look in detail at some of the items in the cargoes which came to Rome.<p/>At the time during which John was writing there was in Rome a passion for silver dishes. Silver came mainly from Carthagena in Spain, where 40,000 men toiled in the silver mines. Dishes, bowls, jugs, fruitbaskets, statuettes, whole dinner services, were made of solid silver. Lucius Crassus had wrought silver dishes which had cost 50 British pounds for each pound of silver in them. Even a fighting general like Pompeius Paullinus carried with him on his campaigns wrought silver dishes which weighed 12,000 pounds, the greater part of which fell into the hands of the Germans, spoils of war. Pliny tells us that women would bathe only in silver baths, soldiers had swords with silver hilts and scabbards with silver chains, even poor women had silver anklets and the very slaves had silver mirrors. At the Saturnalia, the festival which fell at the same time as the Christian Christmas, and at which gifts were given, often the gifts were little silver spoons and the like, and the wealthier the giver the more ostentatious was the gift. Rome was a city of silver.<p/>It was an age which passionately loved precious stones and pearls. It was largely through the conquests of Alexander the Great that precious stones came to the west. Pliny said that the fascination of a gem was that the majestic might of nature presented itself in a limited space.<p/>The order of preference in stones set diamonds first, emeralds--mainly from Scythia--second, beryls and opals, which were used for women's ornaments, third, and the sardonyx, which was used for seal-rings, fourth.<p/>One of the strangest of ancient beliefs was that precious stones had medicinal qualities. The amethyst was said to be a cure for drunkenness; it is wine-red in colour and the word amethyst was derived--so it was said--from a which means not and methuskein (<a href='S:G3182'>G3182</a>) which means to make drunk. The jasper, or bloodstone, was held to be a cure for haemorrhage. The green jasper was said to bring fertility. The diamond was held to neutralise poison and to cure delirium, and amber worn on the neck was a cure for fever and for other troubles.<p/>Of all stones the Romans loved pearls more than any other. As we have seen, they were drunk dissolved in wine. A certain Struma Nonius had a ring with an opal in it as big as a filbert worth 21,250 British pounds, but that pales into insignificance compared with the pearl which Julius Caesar gave Servilia and which cost 65,250 pounds. Pliny tells of seeing Lollia Paulina, one of Caligula's wives, at a betrothal feast, wearing an ornament of emeralds and pearls, covering head, hair, ears, neck and fingers, which was worth 425,000 British pounds.<p/><b>(2) THE LAMENT OF THE MERCHANTS</b> (<a href='B:730 18:11-16'>Rev 18:11-16</a> <b>continued)</b><p/> Fine linen came mainly from Egypt. It was the clothing of priests and kings. It was very expensive; a priest's robe, for instance, would cost between 40 and 50 British pounds.<p/>Purple came mainly from Phoenicia. The very word Phoenicia is probably derived from phoinos, which means blood-red, and the Phoenicians may have been known as "the purple men, because they dealt in purple. Ancient purple was much redder than modern purple. It was the royal colour and the garment of wealth. The purple dye came from a shellfish called murex. Only one drop came from each animal; and the shell had to be opened as soon as the shellfish died, for the purple came from a little vein which dried up almost immediately after death. A pound of double-dyed purple wool cost almost 50 British pounds, and a short purple coat more than 100 pounds. Pliny tells us that at this time there was in Rome "a frantic passion for purple."<p/>Silk may now be a commonplace, but in the Rome of the Revelation it was almost beyond price, for it had to be imported from far-off China. So costly was it that a pound of silk was sold for a pound weight of gold. Under Tiberius a law was passed against the use of solid gold vessels for the serving of meals and "against men disgracing themselves with silken garments" (Tacitus: Annals 2: 23).<p/>Scarlet, like purple, was a much sought after dye. When we are thinking of these fabrics we may note that another of Rome's ostentatious furnishings was Babylonian coverlets for banqueting couches. Such coverlets often cost as much as 7,000 British pounds, and Nero possessed coverlets for his couches which had cost more than 43,000 British pounds each.<p/>The most interesting of the woods mentioned in this passage is thyine. In Latin it was called citrus wood; its botanical name is thuia articulate. Coming from North Africa, from the Atlas region, it was sweet-smelling and beautifully grained. It was used especially for table tops. But, since the citrus tree is seldom very large, trees large enough to provide table tops were very scarce. Tables made of thyine wood could cost anything from 4,000 to 15,000 British pounds. Seneca, Nero's prime minister, was said to have three hundred of such thyine tables with marble legs.<p/>Ivory was much used for decorative purposes, especially by those who wished to make an ostentatious display. It was used in sculpture, for statues, for swordhilts, for inlaying furniture, for ceremonial chairs, for doors, and even for household furniture. Juvenal talks of the wealthy man: "Nowadays a rich man takes no pleasure in his dinner--his turbot and his venison have no taste, his unguents and his roses seem to smell rotten--unless the broad slabs of his dinner table rest upon a ramping, gaping leopard of solid ivory."<p/>Statuettes of Corinthian brass or bronze were world famous and fabulously expensive. Iron came from the Black Sea and from Spain. For long marble had been used in Babylon for building, but not in Rome. Augustus, however, could boast he had found Rome of brick and left it of marble. In the end there was actually an office called the ratio marmorum whose task was to search the world for fine marbles with which to decorate the buildings of Rome.<p/>Cinnamon was a luxury article coming from India and from near Zanzibar, and in Rome it commanded a price of about 65 British pounds per pound (of weight).<p/>Spice is here misleading. The Greek is amomon (<a href='S:G299'>G299</a>) ; Wycliff translated simply "amome". Amomon was a sweet-smelling balsam, particularly used as a dressing for the hair and as an oil for funeral rites.<p/>In the Old Testament incense had altogether a religious use as an accompaniment of sacrifice in the Temple. According to <a href='B:20 30:34-38'>Exo 30:34-38</a> the Temple incense was made of stacte, onycha, galbanum, and frankincense, which are all perfumed gums or balsams. According to the Talmud seven further ingredients were added--myrrh, cassia, spikenard, saffron, costus, mace and cinnamon. In Rome incense was used as a perfume with which to greet guests and to scent the room after meals.<p/>In the ancient world wine was universally drunk, but drunkenness was regarded as a grave disgrace. Wine was usually highly diluted, in the proportion of two parts of wine to five parts of water. The grapes were pressed and the juice extracted. Some of it was used just as it was as an unfermented drink. Some of it was boiled to a jelly, and the jelly used to give body and flavour to poor wines. The rest was poured into great jars, which were left to ferment for nine days, then closed, and opened monthly to check the progress of the wine. Even slaves had abundant wine as part of their daily ration, since it was no more than 2 1/2 pence per gallon.<p/>Myrrh was the gum resin of a shrub which grew mainly in Yemen and in North Africa. It was medically used as an astringent, a stimulant, and an antiseptic. It was also used as a perfume and as an anodyne by women in the time of their purification, and for the embalming of bodies.<p/>Frankincense was a gum resin produced by a tree of the genus Boswellia. An incision was made in the tree and a strip of bark removed from below it. The resin then exuded from the tree like milk. In about ten or twelve weeks it coagulated into lumps in which it was sold. It was used for perfume for the body, for the sweetening and flavouring of wine, for oil for lamps and for sacrificial incense.<p/>The chariots here mentioned--the word is rede--were not racing or military chariots. They were four-wheeled private chariots, and the aristocrats of Roman wealth often had them silver-plated.<p/>The list closes with the mention of slaves and the souls of men. The word used for slave is soma (<a href='S:G4983'>G4983</a>), which literally means a body. The slave market was called the somatemporos, literally the place where bodies are sold. The idea is that the slave was sold body and soul into the possession of his master.<p/>It is almost impossible for us to understand how much Roman civilization was based on slavery. There were some 60,000,000 slaves in the empire. It was no unusual thing for a man to have four hundred slaves. "Use your slaves like the limbs of your body, says a Roman writer, "each for its own end." There were, of course, slaves to do the menial work; and each particular service had its slave. We read of torch-bearers, lantern-bearers, sedan-chair carriers, street attendants, keepers of the outdoor garments. There were slaves who were secretaries, slaves to read aloud, and even slaves to do the necessary research for a man writing a book or a treatise. The slaves even did a man's thinking for him. There were slaves called nomenclatores whose duty it was to remind a man of the names of his clients and dependants! "We remember by means of others, says a Roman writer. There were even slaves to remind a man to eat and to go to bed! "Men were too weary even to know that they were hungry." There were slaves to go in front of their master and to return the greetings of friends, which the master was too tired or too disdainful to return himself. A certain ignorant man, unable to learn or remember anything, got himself a set of slaves. One memorized Homer, one Hesiod, others the lyric poets. Their duty was to stand behind him as he dined and to prompt him with suitable quotations. He paid 1,000 British pounds for each of them. Some slaves were beautiful youths, "the flower of Asia, who simply stood around the room at banquets to delight the eye. Some were cup-bearers. Some were Alexandrians, who were trained in pert and often obscene repartee. The guests often chose to wipe their soiled hands on the hair of the slaves. Such beautiful boy slaves cost at least 1,000 or 2,000 British pounds. Some slaves were freaks--dwarfs, giants, cretins, hermaphrodites. There was actually a market in freaks--"men without shanks, with short arms, with three eyes, with pointed heads." Sometimes dwarfs were artificially produced for sale.<p/>It is a grim picture of men being used body and soul for the service and entertainment of others.<p/>This was the world for which the merchants were grieving, the lost markets and the lost money which they were bewailing. This was the Rome whose end John was threatening. And he was right--for a society built on luxury, on wantonness, on pride, on callousness to human life and personality is necessarily doomed, even from the human point of view.<p/><b>THE LAMENT OF THE SHIPMASTERS</b> (<a href='B:730 18:17-19'>Rev 18:17-19</a>)


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 And every shipmaster and everyone who sails the sea, and sailors who gain their living from the sea, stood afar off and cried, when they saw the smoke of her burning. "What city was like the great city!" they said, and they flung dust upon their heads, and cried weeping and lamenting: "Alas! Alas! for the great city, in which all who had ships on the sea grew rich from her wealth, because in one hour she has been desolated."<p/></i><p/>First, the kings uttered their lament over Rome; then, the merchants; and now, the shipmasters. John was taking his picture from Ezekiel's picture of the fall of Tyre, from which so much of this chapter comes. "At the sound of the cry of your pilots the countryside shakes, and down from their ships come all that handle the oar. The mariners and all the pilots of the sea stand on the shore and wail aloud over you, and cry bitterly. They cast dust on their heads and wallow in ashes." (<a href='B:330 27:28-30'>Eze 27:28-30</a>).<p/>Rome, of course, was not upon the sea coast, but its port was Ostia, and, as we have seen, the merchandise of the world flowed into the port of Rome.<p/>It is little wonder that the shipmasters and the sailors will lament, for all the trade which brought so much wealth will be gone.<p/>There is something almost pathetic in these laments. In every case the lament is not for Rome but for themselves. It is one of the laws of life that, if a man places all his happiness in material things, he misses the greatest things of all--love and friendship with his fellowmen.<p/><b>JOY AMIDST LAMENTING</b> (<a href='B:730 18:20'>Rev 18:20</a>)<p/><i> 18:20 Rejoice over her, O Heaven, and you dedicated ones of God, and you apostles, and you prophets, because God has given judgment for you against her.<p/></i><p/>Amidst all the lamenting comes the voice of joy, the voice of those who are glad to see the vengeance of God upon his enemies and their persecutors.<p/>This is a note which we find more than once in Scripture. "Praise his people, O you nations; for he avenges the blood of his servants, and takes vengeance on his adversaries, and makes expiation for the land of his people" (<a href='B:50 32:43'>Deu 32:43</a>). Jeremiah says of the doom of ancient Babylon; "Then the heaven and the earth, and all that is in them, shall sing for joy over Babylon; for the destroyers shall come against them out of the north, says the Lord" (<a href='B:300 51:48'>Jer 51:48</a>).<p/>We are here very far from praying for those who despitefully use us. But two things have to be remembered. However we may feel about this voice of vengeance, it is none the less the voice of faith. These men had utter confidence that no man on God's side could ultimately be on the losing side.<p/>Second, there is little personal bitterness here. The people to be destroyed are not so much personal enemies as the enemies of God.<p/>At the same time this is not the more excellent way which Jesus taught. When Abraham Lincoln was told that he was too lenient with his opponents and that his duty was to destroy his enemies, he answered: "Do I not destroy my enemies when I make them my friends?" The real Christian attitude is to seek to destroy enmity, not by force, but by the power of that love which won the victory of the Cross.<p/><b>THE FINAL DESOLATION</b> (<a href='B:730 18:21-24'>Rev 18:21-24</a>)


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 And a strong angel lifted a stone like a great mill-stone, and cast it into the sea. "Thus, he said, "with a rush Babylon the great city will be cast down, and will never again be found. The sound of harpers and minstrels and flute-players and trumpeters will never again be heard in you. No craftsman of any craft will ever again be found in you. No more will the sound of the mill be heard in you. No more will the light of the lamp shine in you. No more will the voice of the bridegroom and the bride be heard in you; for your merchants were the great ones of the earth, and because all nations were lead astray by your sorcery, and because in her was found the blood of the prophets and of God's dedicated ones and of all who have been slain upon the earth."<p/></i><p/>The picture is of the final desolation of Rome.<p/>It begins with a symbolic action. A strong angel takes a great millstone and hurls it into the sea which closes over it as if it had never been. So will Rome be obliterated. John was taking his picture from the destruction of ancient Babylon. The word of God came to Jeremiah: "When you finish reading this book, bind a stone to it, and cast it into the midst of the Euphrates: and say, Thus shall Babylon sink, to rise no more, because of the evil that I am bringing upon her" (<a href='B:300 51:63-64'>Jer 51:63-64</a>). In later days Strabo, the Greek geographer, was to say that ancient Babylon was so completely obliterated that no one would ever have dared to say that the desert where she stood was once a great city.<p/>Never again will there be any sound of rejoicing. The doom of Ezekiel against Tyre reads: "And I will stop the music of your songs, and the sound of your lyres shall be heard no more" (<a href='B:330 26:13'>Eze 26:13</a>). The harpers and the minstrels played and sang on joyous occasions; the flute was used at festivals and at funerals; the trumpet sounded at the games and at the concerts; but now all music was to be silenced.<p/>Never again will there be the sound of a craftsman plying his trade.<p/>Never again will the sound of domestic activity be heard. Grinding was done by the women at home with two great circular stones one on the top of the other. The corn was put into a hole in the uppermost stone; it was ground between the two stones and emerged through the lower stone. The creak of stone on stone, which could be heard any day at any house door, will never again be heard.<p/>Never again will there be light on the streets or in the houses.<p/>Never again will there be any sound of wedding rejoicing for even love will die. Jeremiah uses the same pictures: "I will banish from them the voice of mirth, and the voice of gladness, the voice of the bridegroom, and the voice of the bride, the grinding of the millstones, and the light of the lamp" (<a href='B:300 25:10'>Jer 25:10</a>; compare <a href='B:300 7:34'>Jer 7:34</a>; <a href='B:300 16:9'>Jer 16:9</a>).<p/>Rome is to become a terrible silent desolation.<p/>And this punishment will come for certain definite reasons.<p/>It will come because she worshipped wealth and luxury and lived wantonly, and found no pleasure except in material things.<p/>It will come because she led men astray with her sorceries. Nahum called Nineveh "graceful and of deadly charms" (<a href='B:410 3:14'>Nah 3:14</a>). Rome flirted with the evil powers to make an evil world.<p/>It will come because she was blood guilty. "Woe to the bloody city!" said Ezekiel of Tyre (<a href='B:330 24:6'>Eze 24:6</a>). Within Rome the martyrs perished and persecution went out from her all over the earth.<p/>Before we begin to study the last four chapters of the Revelation in detail, it will be well to set out their general programme of events.<p/>They begin with a universal rejoicing at the destruction of Babylon, the power of Rome (<a href='B:730 19:1-10'>Rev 19:1-10</a>). There follows a description of the emergence of a white horse and on it him who is Faithful and True (<a href='B:730 19:11-18'>Rev 19:11-18</a>). Next comes the assembling of hostile powers against the conquering Christ (<a href='B:730 19:19'>Rev 19:19</a>); then the defeat of the opposing forces, the casting of the beast and of the false prophet into the lake of fire, and the slaughter of the rest (<a href='B:730 19:20-21'>Rev 19:20-21</a>).<p/><a href='B:730 20:1-15'>Rev 20:1-15</a> opens with the binding of the devil in the abyss for a period of a thousand years (<a href='B:730 20:1-3'>Rev 20:1-3</a>). There follows the resurrection of the martyrs to reign with Christ for a thousand years, although the rest of the dead are not yet resurrected (<a href='B:730 20:4-6'>Rev 20:4-6</a>). At the end of the thousand years Satan is again loosed for a brief space; there is final conflict with the enemies of Christ who are destroyed with fire from heaven while Satan is cast for ever into the lake of fire and brimstone (<a href='B:730 20:7-10'>Rev 20:7-10</a>). Then comes the general resurrection and the general judgment (<a href='B:730 20:11-14'>Rev 20:11-14</a>); and finally the description of the new heaven and the new earth to take the place of the things which have passed away (<a href='B:730 21:1-27'>Rev 21:1-27</a>; <a href='B:730 22:1-5'>Rev 22:1-5</a>). 


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 After these things I heard what sounded like a great voice of a vast multitude in heaven. "Hallelujah!" they were saying. "Salvation and glory and power belong to our God, because his judgments are true and just, for he judged the great harlot who corrupted the earth with her fornication, and has avenged upon her the blood of his servants."<p/></i><p/>In the description of the total destruction of Babylon, come the words: "Rejoice over her, O heaven, O saints and apostles and prophets, for God has given judgment for you against her!" (<a href='B:730 18:20'>Rev 18:20</a>). Here now is the rejoicing which was called for.<p/>It begins with the shout of a vast multitude in heaven. We have already come upon two vast multitudes in heaven, the martyrs in <a href='B:730 7:9'>Rev 7:9</a> and the angels in <a href='B:730 5:11'>Rev 5:11</a>. Here is most likely the multitude of the angels, first in the Te Deum of praise.<p/>This shout of rejoicing begins with Hallelujah. Hallelujah is a very common word in religious vocabulary but the only time it actually appears in Scripture is on the four occasions in this chapter. Like Hosanna (<a href='S:H3467'>H3467</a> + <a href='S:H4994'>H4994</a> and <a href='S:G5614'>G5614</a>) it is one of the few Hebrew words which have established themselves in ordinary religious language. It probably came to be so well known to even the simplest member of the Church through its special use as a response of praise in the Easter worship.<p/>Hallelujah literally means "Praise God". It is derived from halal (<a href='S:H1984'>H1984</a>), which means to praise, and Jah (<a href='S:H3050'>H3050</a>), which is the name of God. Although Hallelujah appears only here in the Bible, it occurs in a translated form frequently. It is actually the first phrase in <a href='B:230 106:1-48'>Psa 106:1-48</a>; <a href='B:230 111:1-10'>Psa 111:1-10</a>; <a href='B:230 112:1-10'>Psa 112:1-10</a>; <a href='B:230 113:1-9'>Psa 113:1-9</a>; <a href='B:230 117:1-2'>Psa 117:1-2</a>; <a href='B:230 135:1-21'>Psa 135:1-21</a>; <a href='B:230 146:1-10'>Psa 146:1-10</a>; <a href='B:230 147:1-20'>Psa 147:1-20</a>; <a href='B:230 148:1-14'>Psa 148:1-14</a>; <a href='B:230 149:1-9'>Psa 149:1-9</a>; <a href='B:230 150:1-6'>Psa 150:1-6</a>. The series of Psalms from <a href='B:230 113:1-9'>Psa 113:1-9</a>; <a href='B:230 114:1-8'>Psa 114:1-8</a>; <a href='B:230 115:1-18'>Psa 115:1-18</a>; <a href='B:230 116:1-19'>Psa 116:1-19</a>; <a href='B:230 117:1-2'>Psa 117:1-2</a>; <a href='B:230 118:1-29'>Psa 118:1-29</a> were called the Hallel (compare <a href='S:H1984'>H1984</a>), the Praise God, and were part of the essential education of every Jewish lad. Where Hallelujah occurs in the Old Testament it is translated by Praise God, but here in this chapter the original Hebrew form, transliterated into Greek, is retained.<p/>God is praised because salvation, glory, and power belong to him. Each of these three great attributes of God should awaken its own response in the heart of man. The salvation of God should awaken the gratitude of man; the glory of God should awaken the reverence of man; the power of God is always exercised in the love of God and should, therefore, awaken the trust of man. Gratitude, reverence, trust--these are the constituent elements of real praise.<p/>God is praised because he has exercised his just and true judgment on the great harlot. Judgment is the inescapable consequence of sin. T. S. Kepler comments: "The moral law can no more be broken than the law of gravity; it can only be illustrated." It is said that the judgments of God are true and just. God alone is perfect in judgment for three reasons. First, he alone can see the inmost thoughts and desires of any man. Second, he alone has that purity which can judge without prejudice. Third, he alone has the wisdom to find the right judgment and the power to apply it.<p/>The great harlot is judged because she corrupted the world. The worst of all sins is to teach others to sin.<p/>All forbidden things we've sought,<p/>All the mischief we have wrought,<p/>All the sin to others taught,<p/>Forgive, O Lord, for Jesus' sake.<p/>There is one other reason for the rejoicing. The judgment on Rome is the guarantee that God never in the end abandons his own.<p/><b>THE TE DEUM OF NATURE AND THE CHURCH</b> (<a href='B:730 19:3-5'>Rev 19:3-5</a>)


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 And a second time they said: "Hallelujah! for the smoke from her rises for ever and ever."<p/>And the twenty-four elders, and the four living creatures fell down and worshipped the God who is seated upon the throne. "Amen," they said, "Hallelujah!" And a voice came forth from the throne. "Praise our God, it said, "all you his servants, you who fear him, small and great."<p/></i><p/>The angelic host sings a second Hallelujah. Their praise is that the smoke of Babylon rises for ever and ever. That is to say, never again will she rise from her ruins. The actual picture comes from Isaiah: "The streams of Edom shall be turned into pitch, and her soil into brimstone; her land shall become burning pitch. Night and day it shall not be quenched; its smoke shall go up for ever and ever. From generation to generation it shall lie waste; none shall pass through it for ever and ever" (<a href='B:290 34:9-10'>Isa 34:9-10</a>).<p/>There follows praise from the twenty-four elders and the four living creatures. The twenty-four elders were prominent in the early visions (<a href='B:730 4:4'>Rev 4:4</a>; <a href='B:730 4:10'>Rev 4:10</a>; <a href='B:730 5:6'>Rev 5:6</a>; <a href='B:730 5:11'>Rev 5:11</a>; <a href='B:730 5:14'>Rev 5:14</a>; <a href='B:730 7:11'>Rev 7:11</a>; <a href='B:730 11:16'>Rev 11:16</a>; <a href='B:730 14:3'>Rev 14:3</a>) as were the four living creatures (<a href='B:730 4:6-9'>Rev 4:6-9</a>; <a href='B:730 5:6-14'>Rev 5:6-14</a>; <a href='B:730 6:1-7'>Rev 6:1-7</a>; <a href='B:730 7:11'>Rev 7:11</a>; <a href='B:730 14:3'>Rev 14:3</a>; <a href='B:730 15:7'>Rev 15:7</a>). We saw that the twenty-four elders represent the twelve patriarchs and the twelve apostles, and, therefore, stand for the totality of the Church. The four living creatures, respectively like a lion, an ox, a man and an eagle, stand for two things, for all that is bravest, strongest, wisest and swiftest in nature--and for the cherubim. Hence a song of praise from the twenty-four elders and the four living creatures is a Te Deum from the whole of the Church and the whole of nature.<p/>The voice that comes from the throne is most likely to be understood as the voice of one of the cherubim. "Praise our God, says the voice, "all you his servants, you who fear him." Once again John finds his model in the words of the Old Testament, for that is a quotation from <a href='B:230 135:1'>Psa 135:1</a>; <a href='B:230 135:20'>Psa 135:20</a>.<p/>Two sets of people are called on to praise God. First, there are his servants. In the Revelation two kinds of people are specially called the servants of God; the prophets (<a href='B:730 10:7'>Rev 10:7</a>; <a href='B:730 11:18'>Rev 11:18</a>; <a href='B:730 22:6'>Rev 22:6</a>), and the martyrs (<a href='B:730 7:3'>Rev 7:3</a>; <a href='B:730 19:2'>Rev 19:2</a>). First, then, this is the praise of the prophets and the martyrs who have witnessed for God with their voices and with their lives. Second, there are the small and the great. H. B. Swete says that this comprehensive phrase embraces "Christians of all intellectual capacities and social grades, and of all stages of progress in the life of Christ." It is a universal summons to praise God for his mighty acts.<p/><b>THE TE DEUM OF THE REDEEMED</b> (<a href='B:730 19:6-8'>Rev 19:6-8</a>)


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 And I heard a voice which sounded like the voice of a vast multitude, and like the sound of many waters, and like the sound of mighty crashes of thunder.<p/>"Hallelujah!" they said, "because the Lord our God, the Almighty, has entered into his kingdom. Let us rejoice and let us exult, and let us give him the glory, for the marriage of the Lamb has come, and his Bride has prepared herself, and it has been granted to her to clothe herself with fine linen, shining and pure." For the fine linen is the righteous deeds of God's dedicated people.<p/></i><p/>The final shout is the praise of the host of the redeemed. John goes out of his way to heap up similes to describe its sound. It was, as H. B. Swete puts it, like "the din of a vast concourse, the roar of a cataract, the roll of thunder."<p/>Once again John finds his inspiration in the words of Scripture. In his mind are two things. First, he is remembering <a href='B:230 97:1'>Psa 97:1</a>: "The Lord reigns; let the earth rejoice." Second, he says: "Let us rejoice and exult." There is only one other place in the New Testament where these two verbs (chairein, <a href='S:G5463'>G5463</a>, and agallian, <a href='S:G21'>G21</a>) come together--in Jesus Christ's promise to the persecuted: "Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven" (<a href='B:470 5:12'>Mat 5:12</a>). It is as if the multitude of the redeemed sent up their shout of praise because the promise of Christ to his persecuted ones had come abundantly true.<p/>Next comes the marriage of the Lamb to his bride. That picture stands for the final union between Jesus Christ and his Church. R. H. Charles finely says that the marriage symbolism "denotes the intimate and indissoluble communion of Christ with the community which he has purchased with his own blood" a communion which is "first reached in fulness by the host of the martyrs."<p/>The thought of the relationship between God and his people as a marriage goes far back into the Old Testament. Again and again the prophets thought of Israel as the chosen bride of God. "I will betroth you to me for ever, Hosea hears God say, "I will betroth you to me in righteousness" (<a href='B:350 2:19-20'>Hos 2:19-20</a>). "Your Maker is your husband; the Lord of hosts is his name, says Isaiah (<a href='B:290 54:5'>Isa 54:5</a>). Jeremiah hears God say and appeal: "Return, O faithless children, for I am your master" (<a href='B:300 3:14'>Jer 3:14</a>). Ezekiel works out the whole picture most fully in <a href='B:330 16:1-63'>Eze 16:1-63</a>.<p/>The marriage symbolism runs all through the Gospels. We read of the marriage feast (<a href='B:470 22:2'>Mat 22:2</a>); of the bridechamber and the wedding garment (<a href='B:470 22:10-11'>Mat 22:10-11</a>); of the sons of the bridechamber (<a href='B:480 2:19'>Mar 2:19</a>); of the bridegroom (<a href='B:480 2:19'>Mar 2:19</a>; <a href='B:470 25:1'>Mat 25:1</a>); of the friends of the bridegroom (<a href='B:500 3:29'>Joh 3:29</a>). And Paul speaks of himself as betrothing the Church like a pure virgin to Christ (<a href='B:540 11:2'>2Co 11:2</a>), and for him the relationship of Christ to his Church is the great model of the relationship of husband and wife (<a href='B:560 5:21-33'>Eph 5:21-33</a>).<p/>This may seem to us a strange metaphor. But it conserves certain great truths. In any real marriage there must be four things which must also be in the relationship between the Christian and Christ.<p/>(i) There is love. A loveless marriage is a contradiction in terms.<p/>(ii) There is intimate communion, so intimate that man and wife become one flesh. The relationship of the Christian and Christ must be the closest in all life.<p/>(iii) There is joy. There is nothing like the joy of loving and of being loved. If Christianity does not bring joy, it does not bring anything.<p/>(iv) There is fidelity. No marriage can last without fidelity, and the Christian must be as faithful to Jesus Christ as Jesus Christ is to him.<p/><b>THE ALMIGHTY AND HIS KINGDOM</b> (<a href='B:730 19:6-8'>Rev 19:6-8</a> <b>continued)</b><p/> This passage calls God by a certain name; and says that he has entered into his kingdom.<p/>It calls God the Almighty. The word is pantokrator (<a href='S:G3841'>G3841</a>), literally the one who controls all things. The significant thing about this great word is that it occurs ten times in the New Testament. Once it is in an Old Testament quotation in <a href='B:540 6:18'>2Co 6:18</a>; the other nine times are all in the Revelation (<a href='B:730 1:8'>Rev 1:8</a>; <a href='B:730 4:8'>Rev 4:8</a>; <a href='B:730 11:17'>Rev 11:17</a>; <a href='B:730 15:3'>Rev 15:3</a>; <a href='B:730 16:7'>Rev 16:7</a>; <a href='B:730 16:14'>Rev 16:14</a>; <a href='B:730 19:6'>Rev 19:6</a>; <a href='B:730 19:15'>Rev 19:15</a>; <a href='B:730 21:22'>Rev 21:22</a>). In other words, this is the characteristic title for God in the Revelation.<p/>There was never a time in history in which such forces were drawn up against the Church as when the Revelation was written. There was never a time when the Christian was called upon to undergo such suffering and to accept so continually the prospect of a cruel death. And yet in such times John calls God pantokrator (<a href='S:G3841'>G3841</a>).<p/>Here is faith and confidence; and the whole point of this passage is that that faith and confidence are vindicated.<p/>The Church, the Bride of Christ, is clothed in fine linen, pure and shining. There is a contrast with the scarlet and gold of the great harlot. The white linen represents the good deeds of God's dedicated people; that is to say, it is character which forms the robe which arrays the Bride of Christ.<p/><b>THE ONLY WORSHIP</b> (<a href='B:730 19:9-10'>Rev 19:9-10</a> <b>a)</b>


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a And he said to me: "Write! Blessed are those who are invited to the feast of the marriage of the Lamb!" And he said to me: "These are the true words of God." And I fell down before his feet to worship him; and he said to me: "See that you do not do this. I am your fellow-servant and the fellow-servant of your brothers who possess the testimony which Jesus gave. Worship God!"<p/></i><p/>The Jews had the idea that, when the Messiah came, God's people would, as it were, be entertained by God to a great Messianic Banquet. Isaiah speaks of God preparing for his people "a feast of fat things, a feast of wine on the lees, of fat things full of marrow, of wine on the lees well refined" (<a href='B:290 25:6'>Isa 25:6</a>). Jesus speaks of many coming from the east and the west and sitting down with the patriarchs in the kingdom of heaven (<a href='B:470 8:11'>Mat 8:11</a>). The word used for sitting down is the word for reclining at a meal. The picture is of all men sitting down at the Messianic Banquet of God. Jesus at the Last Supper said that he would not again drink of the cup until he drank it new in his Father's kingdom (<a href='B:470 26:29'>Mat 26:29</a>). That was Jesus looking forward to the great Messianic Banquet.<p/>It may well be from that old Jewish idea that there came the idea of the marriage feast of the Lamb, for that indeed would be the true Messianic Banquet. It is a simple picture, not to be taken with crude literalness, but simply saying very beautifully that in his kingdom all men will enjoy the bounty of God.<p/>But this passage confronts us with something which became of very great importance in the worship of the Church. It was John's instinct to worship the angelic messenger; but the angel forbids him to do that, because the angels are no more than men's fellow-servants. Worship is for God alone. John was forbidding angel worship; and that was a very necessary prohibition, for in the early church there was a well-nigh inevitable tendency to worship angels, a tendency which has never wholly disappeared.<p/>(i) In certain circles of Judaism the angels had a very large place. Raphael tells Tobit that he is the angel who brought his prayer before God (Tob_13:12-15). In the Testament of Dan (<a href='B:340 6:2'>Dan 6:2</a>) the angel who intercedes for men is mentioned. In the Testament of Levi (5:5) Michael is said to be the angel who intercedes for Israel. A fourth century A.D. Rabbi, Jehudah, actually gave the odd instruction that men ought not to pray in Aramaic because the angels did not understand Aramaic! The prevalence of all this in Judaism is underlined by the fact that certain Rabbis insisted that prayers must always be offered direct to God, and not to Michael or to Gabriel.<p/>In Judaism there was increasingly stressed the transcendence of God, because of that it was increasingly felt that man needed some intermediary. Hence arose the prominence of angels.<p/>When Jews came over into Christianity, sometimes they brought this special reverence for the angels with them, forgetting that with the coming of Jesus no other intermediary between God and man can be necessary.<p/>(ii) A Greek came into the Church from a world of thought which made angel worship a real danger. First, he came from a world in which there were many gods--Zeus, Hera, Apollo, Aphrodite and the rest, What was easier than to keep the old gods in the form of angels? Second, he came from a world in which it was believed that God did not interest himself directly but made his contact through the demons (daimon, <a href='S:G1142'>G1142</a>), by means of whom he controlled the natural forces and acted upon men. What was easier than to turn the demons into angels and to worship them?<p/>John insists that angels are no more than the servants of God; and that God alone must be worshipped. Any other intermediary than Jesus Christ between God and man must be utterly opposed.<p/><b>THE SPIRIT OF PROPHECY</b> (<a href='B:730 19:10'>Rev 19:10</a> <b>b)</b><p/><i> 19:10b The testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy.<p/></i><p/>We take this phrase by itself, because it is both ambiguous and important.<p/>The ambiguity springs from the fact that the testimony of Jesus can bear either of two meanings.<p/>(i) It can mean the witness which the Christian bears to Jesus Christ. That is the way in which H. B. Swete takes it. He says: "The possession of the prophetic spirit, which makes a true prophet, shows itself in a life of witness to Jesus, which perpetuates his witness to the Father and to himself" A prophet's message lies in the personal witness of his life, even more than in the spoken witness of his words.<p/>(ii) It can equally mean the witness which Jesus Christ gives to men. On that interpretation the phrase will mean that no man can speak to men until he has listened to Jesus Christ. It was said of a great preacher: "First he listened to God, then he spoke to men."<p/>This is the kind of double meaning of which the Greek language is capable. It may well be that John intended the double meaning; and that we are meant not to choose between the meanings, but to accept both of them. If so, we can define the true prophet as the man who has received from Christ the message he brings to men, and whose words and works are at one and the same time an act of witness to Christ.<p/><b>THE CONQUERING CHRIST</b> (<a href='B:730 19:11'>Rev 19:11</a>)<p/><i> 19:11 And I saw heaven opened, and, behold, a white horse, and he who is mounted on it is called Faithful and True, and in righteousness he judges and makes war.<p/></i><p/>Here is one of the most dramatic moments in the Revelation, the emergence of the conquering Christ.<p/>(i) John sees Christ as the conqueror. He is, as H. B. Swete puts it, "a royal commander followed by a dazzling retinue." Here is a picture which is essentially Jewish. Jewish dreams were full of the warrior Messiah, who would lead God's people to victory and smash his enemies. In the Psalms of Solomon we have that picture:<p/>Behold, O Lord, and raise up unto them their king the Son of<p/>David,<p/>At the time in which thou seest, O God, that he may reign<p/>over Israel, Thy servant.<p/>And gird him with strength that he may shatter unrighteous<p/>rulers,<p/>And that he may purge Jerusalem from nations that trample<p/>her down to destruction.<p/>Wisely, righteously, he shall thrust out sinners from the<p/>inheritance,<p/>He shall destroy the pride of the sinner as a potter's vessel,<p/>With a rod of iron he shall break in pieces all their substance,<p/>He shall destroy the godless nations with the word of his<p/>mouth;<p/>At his rebuke nations shall flee before him,<p/>And he shall reprove sinners for the thoughts of their hearts<p/>(Wis 17:23-27).<p/>There is a Rabbinic picture of the Messiah: "How beauteous is the king Messiah, who is about to rise from the house of Judah. He hath bound his loins and gone forth to war against those who hate him; kings and princes shall be slain; he will make red the rivers with the blood of the slain...his garments will be dipped in blood."<p/>The white horse is the symbol of the conqueror, because it was on a white horse that a Roman general rode when he celebrated a triumph.<p/>It is well to remember that the whole background of this picture lies in Jewish expectations of the future and has little to do with the Christ of the Gospels who was meek and lowly in heart.<p/>(ii) His name is Faithful and True. Here, on the other hand, is something which is valid for all time. Christ is described by two words.<p/>(a) He is faithful. The word is pistos (<a href='S:G4103'>G4103</a>) ; it means absolutely to be trusted.<p/>(b) He is true. The word is alethinos (<a href='S:G228'>G228</a>) and has two meanings. It means true in the sense that Jesus Christ is the one who brings the truth and who never at any time has any falsehood in anything that he says. It also means genuine, as opposed to that which is unreal. In Jesus Christ we meet reality.<p/>(iii) He judges and makes war in righteousness. Again John finds his picture in the prophetic words of the Old Testament, where it is said of the chosen king of God: "With righteousness he shall judge the poor" (<a href='B:290 11:4'>Isa 11:4</a>). John's age knew all about the perversion of justice; no one could expect justice from a capricious heathen tyrant. In Asia Minor even the tribunal of the proconsul was subject to bribery and to maladministration. Wars were matters of ambition and tyranny and oppression rather than of justice. But when the conquering Christ comes, his power will be exercised in justice.<p/><b>THE UNKNOWABLE NAME</b> (<a href='B:730 19:12'>Rev 19:12</a>)<p/><i> 19:12 His eyes are a flame of fire, and on his head are many royal crowns, and he has a name written which no one knows except himself.<p/></i><p/>We begin the description of the conquering Christ.<p/>His eyes are a flame of fire. We have already met this description in <a href='B:730 1:14'>Rev 1:14</a> and <a href='B:730 2:18'>Rev 2:18</a>. It stands for the consuming power of the victorious Christ. On his head he has many crowns. The word used here for crown is diadema (<a href='S:G1238'>G1238</a>), which is the royal crown, as opposed to stephanos (<a href='S:G4735'>G4735</a>) which is the crown of victory. To be crowned with more than one crown may seem strange, but in the time of John it was quite natural. It was not uncommon for a monarch to wear more than one crown in order to show that he was the king of more than one country. For instance, when Ptolemy entered Antioch he wore two crowns or diadems--one to show that he was lord of Asia and one to show that he was lord of Egypt (1Ma_11:13). On the head of the victor Christ there are many crowns to show that he is lord of all the kingdoms of the earth.<p/>He has a name known to no one but himself. This is a passage whose meaning is obscure. What is this name? Many suggestions have been made.<p/>(i) It has been suggested that the name is kurios (<a href='S:G2962'>G2962</a>), Lord. In Php_2:9-11 we read of the name above every name which God has given to Jesus Christ because of his complete obedience; and there the name is almost certainly Lord.<p/>(ii) It is suggested that the name is Y-H-W-H. That was the Jewish name for God. In Hebrew writing there were no vowels; the vowels had to be supplied by the reader. No one really knows what the vowels in Y-H-W-H were. The name was in fact so holy that it was never pronounced. We usually pronounce it JEHOVAH; but the vowels in Jehovah are really those of the Hebrew word 'Adonay (<a href='S:H136'>H136</a>), which means Lord, the name by which the Jews called God in order to avoid pronouncing the sacred name. Many scholars think the name should be Y-A-H-W-E-H. The letters Y-H-W-H (Yahweh) are called the sacred tetragrammaton, the sacred four letters.<p/>(iii) It may be that the name is one which can be revealed only at the final union of Christ and the Church. In the Ascension of Isaiah (<a href='B:290 9:5'>Isa 9:5</a>) there is a saying: "Thou canst not bear his name until thou shalt have ascended out of the body." There was a Jewish belief that no man could know the name of God until he had entered into the life of heaven.<p/>(iv) It may be that here is a lingering relic of the old idea that to know the name of a divine being was to have a certain power over him. In two Old Testament stories, the wrestling of Jacob at Peniel (<a href='B:10 32:29'>Gen 32:29</a>), and the appearance of the angelic messenger to Gideon (<a href='B:70 13:18'>Jdg 13:18</a>) the divine visitor refuses to tell his name.<p/>(v) It may be that we shall never know the symbolism of the unknown name but H. B. Swete has the very fine idea that in the essence of the being of Christ there must always remain something beyond man's understanding. "Notwithstanding the dogmatic helps which the Church offers, the mind fails to grasp the inmost significance of the Person of Christ, which eludes all efforts to bring it within the terms of human knowledge. Only the Son of God can understand the mystery of his own being."<p/><b>GOD'S WORD IN ACTION</b> (<a href='B:730 19:13'>Rev 19:13</a>)<p/><i> 19:13 He is clothed in a robe dipped in blood, and the name by which he is called is the Word of God.<p/></i><p/>Here are two further pictures of the warrior Christ.<p/>(i) He is clothed in a robe dipped in blood, not his own but that of his enemies. As R. H. Charles puts it, it is essential to remember that the Heavenly Leader is this time, not the Slain One, but the Slayer. As usual John takes his picture from the Old Testament and is thinking of the terrible picture in <a href='B:290 63:1-3'>Isa 63:1-3</a>, where the prophet pictures God returning from the destruction of Edom; "I trod them in my anger, and trampled them in my wrath; their life blood is sprinkled upon my garments, and I have stained all my raiment." This is the Messiah of Jewish apocalyptic expectation far more than the Messiah whom Jesus claimed to be.<p/>(ii) His name is the Word of God. Although the words are the same as in the first chapter of the Fourth Gospel, the meaning is quite different and much simpler. Here we have the purely Jewish idea of the Word of God. To a Jew a word was not merely a sound; it did things. As Dr. John Paterson puts it in The Book that is Alive: "The spoken word in Hebrew was fearfully alive. It was not merely a vocable or sound dropped heedlessly from unthinking lips. It was a unit of energy charged with power. It is energised for weal or for woe." We can see that, for instance, in the old story in which Jacob filched Esau's blessing from Isaac (<a href='B:10 27:1-46'>Gen 27:1-46</a>). The blessing given could not be taken back.<p/>If that is so of human words, how much truer it is of the divine word. It is by his word that God created the earth and the heavens and everything in them. And God said is the recurring phrase in the narrative of creation (<a href='B:10 1:3'>Gen 1:3</a>; <a href='B:10 1:6'>Gen 1:6</a>; <a href='B:10 1:9'>Gen 1:9</a>; <a href='B:10 1:14'>Gen 1:14</a>; <a href='B:10 1:26'>Gen 1:26</a>). The word of God, said Jeremiah, is like a hammer that breaks the rock in pieces (<a href='B:300 23:29'>Jer 23:29</a>).<p/>In Wisdom there is a description of the plagues in Egypt, and in particular of the slaying of the first-born sons of the Egyptians: "Thine Almighty Word leaped down from heaven out of thy royal throne, as a fierce man of war, into the midst of a land of destruction, and brought thine unfeigned commandment as a sharp sword, and standing up filled all things with death; and it touched the heaven, but it stood upon the earth" (Wis_18:15-16). It is the active word which carried out the commandment of God. Here is the idea in <a href='B:650 4:12'>Heb 4:12</a>: "The word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword."<p/>When John here called the warrior Christ "The Word of God", he means that here in action is all the power of God's word; everything that God has said, and threatened, and promised is embodied in Christ.<p/><b>THE AVENGING WRATH</b> (<a href='B:730 19:14-16'>Rev 19:14-16</a>)


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 The armies which are in heaven followed him, on white horses, clothed in fine linen, white and pure.<p/>From his mouth there comes forth a sharp two-edged sword, so that with it he may smite the nations, and he will control them with an iron rod. He will tread the winepress of the anger of the wrath of God the Almighty.<p/>And on his robe, and on his thigh, he has a name written--King of kings and Lord of lords.<p/></i><p/>The description of the warrior Christ is further filled in.<p/>He has with him the armies of heaven. With this we may compare Jesus' words at his arrest, when he said he could have had twelve legions of angels to fight for him (<a href='B:470 26:53'>Mat 26:53</a>). The armies of heaven are the hosts of the angels.<p/>From his mouth goes forth a sharp two-edged sword (compare <a href='B:730 1:16'>Rev 1:16</a>). This description of the warrior Christ comes from two Old Testament passages put side by side. Isaiah says of the heavenly king: "He shall smite the earth with the rod of his mouth, and with the breath of his lips shall he slay the wicked" (<a href='B:290 11:4'>Isa 11:4</a>). The Psalmist says of the Messianic king: "You shall break them with a rod of iron, and dash them in pieces like a potter's vessel" (<a href='B:230 2:9'>Psa 2:9</a>). Once again we must remember that this picture is demonstrably painted in Jewish terms.<p/>He will tread the winepress of the anger of the wrath of God. The picture is of the warrior Christ trampling the grapes so as to produce the wine of the wrath of God, which his enemies must drink to their doom.<p/>Our most difficult task here is to discover the picture behind the statement that the warrior Christ has the name King of kings and Lord of lords written on his robe and on his thigh. Various suggestions have been made. It has been suggested that the name is either embroidered on his girdle or engraved on his sword hilt. It is suggested that it is on the skirt of his general's cloak, for that is where it would be easiest to read on a horseman. It is suggested that it is actually written on his thigh, because it was sometimes the custom to engrave the titles of statues on the thigh. It seems clear that the name is visible to all, and, therefore, probably the likeliest solution is that it was written on the skirt of the warrior Christ's robe, lying over his thigh, as he rode upon the white horse. In any event, the name singles him out as the greatest of all rulers, the only true divine One and the universal King.<p/><b>THE DOOM OF THE ENEMIES OF CHRIST</b> (<a href='B:730 19:17-21'>Rev 19:17-21</a>)


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 And I saw one angel standing in the sun, and he cried with a great voice to all the birds who fly in midheaven. "Come, he said, "assemble for the great feast which God will give you, that you may eat the flesh of kings, and the flesh of captains, and the flesh of mighty men, and the flesh of horses and of those who ride them, and the flesh of all men, both free men and slaves, both small and great."<p/>And I saw the beast and the kings of the earth and their armies assembled to make war with him who rides the horse, and with his army. And the beast was seized, and with him the false prophet, who performed in his presence signs by which he deceived those who had received the mark of the beast, and who worship his image. The two of them were cast alive into the lake of fire which burns with brimstone; and the rest were slain with the sword of him who rides the horse, with the sword which comes out of his mouth; and all the birds were glutted with their flesh.<p/></i><p/>Here is a grim picture of birds of prey being invited to come from all over the sky to glut themselves on the corpses of the slain. Again this is a picture taken directly from the Old Testament, from Ezekiel's picture of the slaughter of the forces of Gog and Magog. "Speak to the birds of every sort and to all beasts of the field.... You shall eat the flesh of the mighty, and drink the blood of the princes of the earth--of rams, of lambs, and of goats, of bulls.... And you shall eat fat till you are filled, and drink blood till you are drunk at the sacrificial feast which I am preparing for you" (<a href='B:330 39:17-19'>Eze 39:17-19</a>). This bloodthirsty picture is again far more in line with Old Testament apocalyptic expectations than with the gospel of Jesus Christ.<p/>Here we have a repetition of the imagery of chapter 13: The beast is Nero redivivus; the false prophet is the provincial organization which administered Caesar worship; those who have the mark of the beast are they who have worshipped at the shrine of Caesar; the kings of the earth and their armies are the Parthian hosts, which Nero was to lead again against Rome and against the world.<p/>So all the forces hostile to God assemble themselves; but the warrior Christ is to conquer. Antichrist and his henchmen are cast into the lake of fire; and all their supporters are slain, to await in Sheol the final judgment.<p/>The cosmic drama is drawing to a close. Nothing has yet been said of the fate of Satan, but now we go on to see that fate. 


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<b>THE THOUSAND YEAR REIGN OF CHRIST AND THE SAINTS</b> (<a href='B:730 20:1-15'>Rev 20:1-15</a>)<p/> Since the great importance of this chapter is that it is what might be called the foundation document of Millennarianism or Chiliasm, it will be better to read it as a whole before we deal with it in detail. 1 And I saw an angel coming down out of heaven with the key of the abyss, and with a great chain in his hand. 2 And he laid hold of the dragon, the ancient serpent, who is the Devil and Satan, and bound him for a 3 thousand years, and cast him into the abyss, and locked him in, and set a seal over him, that he might no longer deceive the nations, until the thousand years were completed. After that he must be set free for a little time. 4 And I saw thrones, and those who had received the privilege of judgment sat upon them. And I saw the souls of those who had been beheaded because of their witness to Jesus, and for the sake of the word of God, and such as had not worshipped the beast nor his image, and who had not received the mark upon their forehead, and upon their hand. And they came to life again, and reigned with Christ for a thousand years. 5 The rest of the dead did not come to life again until the thousand years were completed. This is the 6 first resurrection. Blessed and holy is he who has a share in the first resurrection. Over these the second death has no power, but they will be priests of God and of Christ, and they will reign with him for a thousand years. 7 And whenever the thousand years shall have been completed, Satan will be loosed from his prison, and 8 he will come forth to deceive the nations in the four corners of the earth, that is, Gog and Magog, to assemble them for war; and their number will be as the sand of the sea. 9 And they came up over the broad plain of the earth, and they encircled the camp of God's dedicated ones, and the beloved city; and fire came down from 10 heaven and devoured them; and the devil who deceived them was cast into the lake of fire and brimstone, where both the beast and the false prophet were, and they will be tortured day and night for ever and ever. 11 And I saw a great white throne and him who sat upon it. Earth and the sky fled from his presence, 12 and no place was found for them. And I saw the dead, the great and the small, standing before the throne; and books were opened. And another book was opened, the Book of Life; and the dead were judged by that which was written in these books, according to their deeds. 13 And the sea rendered up the dead in it, and Death 14 and Hades were cast into the lake of fire. This is the 15 second death, the lake of fire; and everyone who was not found written in the Book of Life was cast into the lake of fire.<p/></i><p/>Millennium means a period of one thousand years; and chiliasm is derived from the Greek chilias (<a href='S:G5505'>G5505</a>), a thousand. To put it briefly, the commonest form of Millennarianism teaches that for a thousand years before the end Christ will reign upon this earth in a kingdom of his saints; and after that will come the final struggle, the general resurrection, the last judgment and the final consummation.<p/>We note two general facts: First, this was a very common belief in the early church and it still has its adherents. Second, this is the only passage in the New Testament in which it is clearly taught.<p/>The picture is that first of all the Devil will be bound in the abyss for a thousand years. Then those who have been martyred for Christ, although the rest of mankind, even the Christians among them who did not suffer martyrdom, will not be resurrected. There will then be a period of a thousand years in which Christ and his saints will reign. After that for a brief time the Devil will be released. There will follow a final struggle and the general resurrection of all men. The devil will be finally defeated and cast into the lake of fire; his supporters will be burned up with fire from heaven; those whose names are in the Book of Life will enter into blessedness, but those whose names are not in the Book of Life will also be cast into the lake of fire.<p/>This doctrine does not occur anywhere else in the New Testament but it was prevalent throughout the early church especially among those who had received their Christianity from Jewish sources. Here is our key. The origin of this doctrine is not specifically Christian but is to be found in certain Jewish beliefs about the Messianic age which were common in the time after 100 B.C.<p/>Jewish Messianic beliefs were never an unvarying system. They varied from time to time and from thinker to thinker. The basis was that the Messiah would come and establish upon earth the new age, in which the Jewish nation would be supreme.<p/>In the earlier times the general belief was that the kingdom so established would last for ever. God would set up a kingdom which would never be destroyed; it would break in pieces the other kingdoms, but it would stand for ever (<a href='B:340 2:44'>Dan 2:44</a>). It was to be an everlasting dominion (<a href='B:340 7:14'>Dan 7:14</a>; <a href='B:340 7:27'>Dan 7:27</a>).<p/>From 100 B.C. onwards there came a change. It was felt that this world was so incurably evil that within it the Kingdom of God could never finally come; and so there emerged the conception that the Messiah would have a limited reign and that after his reign the final consummation would come. The Apocalypse of Baruch foresees the defeat of the forces of evil; then the principate of the Messiah will stand for ever, until this world of corruption is at an end (Baruch 40:3). One section of Enoch sees history as a series of weeks. There are seven weeks of past history. The eighth is the week of the righteous, when a sword is given to the righteous and sinners are delivered into their hands, and the house of God is built. In the ninth week the evil are written down for destruction, and righteousness will flourish. In the tenth week comes judgment; and only then comes the eternal time of goodness and of God (Enoch 93:3-10).<p/>There was much rabbinic discussion of how long the Messianic age would last before the final consummation arrived. Some said 40, some 100, some 600, some 1,000, some 2,000, some 7,000 years.<p/>We look particularly at two answers. 2 Esdras is very definite. God is represented as saying: "My Son the Messiah shall be revealed, together with those who are with him, and shall rejoice the survivors for four hundred years. And it shall be, after these years, that my Son the Messiah shall die, and all in whom there is human breath. Then shall the world be turned into the primaeval silence seven days, like as at the first beginnings, so that no man is left." And then after that the new age comes (2<a href='B:190 7:28-29'>Est 7:28-29</a>). This passage is unique in foretelling, not only a limited reign of the Messiah, but the Messiah's death. The period of four hundred years was arrived at by setting side by side two passages from the Old Testament. In <a href='B:10 15:13'>Gen 15:13</a> God tells Abraham that the period of the affliction of Israel will last for four hundred years. In <a href='B:230 90:15'>Psa 90:15</a> the prayer is: "Make us glad as many days as thou hast afflicted us, and as many years as we have seen evil." It was, therefore, held that the period of bliss, like the period of affliction, would last for 400 years.<p/>More commonly it was held that the age of the world would correspond to the time taken for its creation and that the time of creation was 6,000 years. "A thousand years in thy sight are but as yesterday" (<a href='B:230 90:4'>Psa 90:4</a>). "One day with the Lord is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day" (<a href='B:680 3:8'>2Pe 3:8</a>). Each day of creation was said to be 1,000 years. It was, therefore, held that the Messiah would come in the sixth thousand of the years; and the seventh thousand, the equivalent of the Sabbath rest in the creation story, would be the reign of the Messiah.<p/>Although the reign of the Messiah was to be the reign of righteousness, it was often conceived of in terms of material blessings. "The earth also shall yield its fruit ten thousand-fold, and on each vine there shall be a thousand branches, and each branch shall produce a thousand clusters, and each cluster shall produce a thousand grapes, and each grape a cor (120 gallons) of wine" (Baruch 29:5, 6) Bar_6:1-73). There will be no more disease, no more untimely death; the beasts will be friendly with men; and women will have no pain in childbirth (2Baruch 73).<p/>Here, then, we have the background of the idea of the Millennium. Already the Jews had come to think of a limited reign of the Messiah, which would be a time of the triumph of righteousness, and of the greatest spiritual and material blessings.<p/>On the basis of this passage of the Revelation Millennarianism or Chiliasm was very widespread within the early Church, although it was never universal.<p/>For Justin Martyr it was an essential part of orthodox belief, although he agreed that there were good Christians who did not accept it. "I and others, who are right-minded Christians at all points, are assured that there will be a resurrection of the dead, and a thousand years in Jerusalem, which will then be built adorned and enlarged as the prophets Ezekiel and Isaiah and others declare" (Dialogue with Trypho 80). Irenaeus also (Against Heresies 5: 32) firmly held to the belief in a Millennium upon earth. One of his reasons was the conviction that, since the saints and the martyrs had suffered upon earth, it was only just that upon earth they should reap the rewards of their fidelity. Tertullian also insisted upon the coming of the Millennium. Papias, the second century collector of so much material upon the Gospels, insisted that Jesus taught the doctrine of the Millennium, and he hands down as the words of Jesus a passage which foretells the wondrous fertility of the earth which is to come: "The days will come in which vines shall grow each having ten thousand shoots, and on each shoot ten thousand branches, and on each branch again ten thousand twigs, and on each twig ten thousand clusters, and on each cluster ten thousand grapes, and each grape when pressed shall yield five and twenty measures of wine. And when any of the saints shall have taken hold of one of their clusters, another shall cry, I am a better cluster; take me, bless the Lord through me. Likewise also a grain of wheat shall produce ten thousand heads, and every head shall have ten thousand grains, and every grain ten thousand pounds of fine flour, bright and clean, and the other fruits, seeds and the grass, shall produce in similar proportions, and all the animals, using these fruits which are products of the soil, shall become in their turn peaceable and harmonious, obedient to man in all subjection." Papias gives this passage as an actual saying of Jesus, but it can be seen that it is very close to the passage of 2Baruch which we have already quoted.<p/>We have already said that, although many in the early church accepted the belief in the Millennium as a part of orthodoxy, many did not. Eusebius almost contemptuously dismisses Papias' report. "I suppose he got those ideas," he says, "through a misunderstanding of the apostolic records, not perceiving that the things said by them were said mystically in figures. For he seems to have been of very limited understanding" (Eusebius: The Ecclesiastical History 3: 38).<p/>One of the things which brought discredit upon Millennarianism was the fact that it undoubtedly lent itself to a materialistic interpretation in which it offered physical as much as spiritual pleasures. Eusebius tells how the great scholar Dionysius had in Egypt to deal with a certain much-respected bishop called Nepos who taught "a millennium of bodily luxury upon this earth" (The Ecclesiastical History 7: 24). Cerinthus, a heretic, deliberately taught a millennium of "delights of the belly and sexual passion, eating and drinking and marrying" (Eusebius: The Ecclesiastical History 3: 28). Jerome spoke contemptuously of "these half-Jews who look for a Jerusalem of gold and precious stones from heaven, and a future kingdom of a thousand years, in which all nations shall serve Israel" (Commentary on <a href='B:290 60:1'>Isa 60:1</a>).<p/>Origen rebuked those who looked for bodily pleasure in the Millennium. The saints will eat, but it will be the bread of life; they will drink, but it will be the cup of wisdom (De Principiis 2: 11: 2-3). It was Augustine, however, who, we may almost say, dealt Millennarianism its death blow. At one time he himself had been a Millennarian, although it was always spiritual blessings for which he longed. H. B. Swete summarizes Augustine's position: "He had learned to see in the captivity of Satan nothing else than the binding of the strong man by the stronger than he which the Lord had foretold (<a href='B:480 3:27'>Mar 3:27</a>; <a href='B:490 11:22'>Luk 11:22</a>); in the thousand years, the whole interval between the first Advent and the last conflict; in the reign of the saints, the entire course of the kingdom of heaven; in the judgment given to them, the binding and loosing of sinners; in the first resurrection, the spiritual share in the Resurrection of Christ which belongs to the baptised" (Augustine: The City of God 20: 7). Augustine spiritualized the whole idea of the Millennium.<p/>Millennarianism is by no means extinct within the Church; but it has never been the universally accepted belief of the Church, this is the only passage in the New Testament which unequivocally teaches it, its whole background is Jewish and not Christian, and the literal interpretation of it has always tended to run into danger and excess. It is a doctrine which has long since been left behind by the main stream of Christian thought and which now belongs to the eccentricities of Christian belief.<p/>The Chaining Of Satan (<a href='B:730 20:1-3'>Rev 20:1-3</a>)<p/>The abyss was a vast subterranean cavern beneath the earth, sometimes the place where all the dead went, sometimes the place where special sinners were kept awaiting punishment. It was reached by a chasm reaching down into the earth and this the angel locks in order to keep the Devil in the abyss.<p/>It was the abyss which the devils feared most of all. In the story of the Gerasene demoniac the request of the devils was that Jesus would not command them to leave the man and to go out into the deep, that is, the abyss (<a href='B:490 8:31'>Luk 8:31</a>).<p/>The seal is set on the chasm to ensure the safe-keeping of the prisoner, just as the seal was set on the tomb of Jesus to make sure that he would not escape (<a href='B:470 27:66'>Mat 27:66</a>).<p/>The Devil is to be kept in the abyss for a period of a thousand years. Even the way in which the word thousand is used in Scripture warns us against taking this literally. <a href='B:230 50:10'>Psa 50:10</a> says that the cattle on a thousand hills belong to God; and <a href='B:220 9:3'>Job 9:3</a> says that a man cannot answer God once in a thousand times. Thousand is simply used to describe a very large number.<p/>At the end of the period the Devil is to be let loose for a little time. H. B. Swete suggests that the reason for the final loosing of the Devil is this. In a period of peace and righteousness, in a time when the opposition, so to speak, did not exist, it might easily happen that people came to take their faith unthinkingly. The loosing of the Devil meant a testing-time for Christians, and there are times when a testing-time is essential, if the reality of the faith is to be preserved.<p/>The Privilege Of Judgment (<a href='B:730 20:4-5'>Rev 20:4-5</a>)<p/>In the first resurrection only those who have died and suffered for the faith are to be raised from the dead. The general resurrection is not to take place until after the thousand year reign of Christ upon earth. There is special privilege for those who have shown special loyalty to Christ.<p/>Those who are to enjoy this privilege belong to two classes. First, there are those who have been martyred for their loyalty to Christ. The word used for the way in which they were killed means to behead with an axe, and denotes the most cruel death. Second, there are those who have not worshipped the beast and have not received his mark on their hand or on their forehead. H. B. Swete identifies these, as those who, although they were not actually martyred, willingly bore suffering, reproach, imprisonment, loss of goods, disruption of their homes and personal relationships for the sake of Christ.<p/>In the ancient Church in the days of persecution two terms were used. Martyrs were those who actually died for their faith; confessors were those who suffered everything short of death for their loyalty to Christ. Both he who dies for Christ and he who lives for Christ will receive his reward.<p/>Those who have been loyal to Christ are to receive the privilege of judgment. This is an idea which occurs more than once in the New Testament. Jesus is represented as saying that, when he returns to sit on the throne of his glory, his twelve apostles will sit on twelve thrones judging the twelve tribes of Israel (<a href='B:470 19:28'>Mat 19:28</a>). Paul reminds the litigious Corinthians that the destiny of the saints is to judge the world (<a href='B:530 6:2'>1Co 6:2</a>). Again we do not need to take this literally. The idea symbolized is that the world to come will redress the balance of this one. In this world the Christian may be a man under the judgment of men; in the world to come the parts will be reversed and those who thought they were the judges will be the judged.<p/>The Privileges Of The Witnesses Of Christ (<a href='B:730 20:6'>Rev 20:6</a>)<p/>(i) For them death has been utterly vanquished. The second death has no power over them. Physical death for them is not a thing to be feared, for it is the gateway to life everlasting.<p/>(ii) They are to be the priests of God and of Christ. The Latin for priest is pontifex, which means a bridge-builder. The priest is the builder of a bridge between God and man; and he, as the Jews saw it, is the one man with the right of direct access into the presence of God. Those who have been loyal to Jesus Christ have the right of free entry into the presence of God; and they have the privilege of introducing others to Jesus Christ.<p/>(iii) They are to reign with Christ. In Christ even the most ordinary man becomes a king.<p/>The Final Struggle (<a href='B:730 20:7-10'>Rev 20:7-10</a>)<p/>At the end of the thousand years the Devil is to be loosed, but he has learned no lesson; he begins where he has left off. He will assemble the nations for the final attack on God.<p/>A final attack on Jerusalem by the hostile nations is one of the standard pictures of the last times in Jewish thought. We find it especially in <a href='B:340 11:1-45'>Dan 11:1-45</a> and in <a href='B:450 14:1-11'>Zec 14:1-11</a>. The Sibylline Orders (3: 663-672) tell how the kings of the nations shall throw themselves against the land in troops, only to be ultimately destroyed by God.<p/>But here we come on a picture which etched itself deeply, if mysteriously, on Jewish thought, the picture of Gog and Magog. We find it first in <a href='B:330 38:1-23'>Eze 38:1-23</a>; <a href='B:330 39:1-29'>Eze 39:1-29</a>. There Gog of the land of Magog, the chief prince of Meshech and of Tubal, is to launch the great attack upon Israel and is to be in the end utterly destroyed. It may be that originally Gog was connected with the Scythians whose invasions--all men feared.<p/>As time went on, in Jewish thought Gog (<a href='S:H1463'>H1463</a>; <a href='S:G1136'>G1136</a>) and Magog (<a href='S:H4031'>H4031</a>; <a href='S:G3098'>G3098</a>) came to stand for everything that is against God. The rabbis taught that Gog and Magog would assemble themselves and their forces against Jerusalem, and would fall by the hand of the Messiah.<p/>The hostile armies under the Devil's leadership come up against the camp of God's people and against the beloved city, that is, Jerusalem; the hosts are consumed with fire from heaven, the Devil is cast into the lake of fire and brimstone to share the fate of the beast and of the false prophet, and the triumph of God is complete.<p/>(1) The Final Judgment (<a href='B:730 20:11-15'>Rev 20:11-15</a>)<p/>Now comes the final judgment. God, the Judge, is on his great white throne which symbolizes his unapproachable purity.<p/>It may be that some will find a problem here. The regular picture of the New Testament is that Jesus Christ is judge. <a href='B:500 5:22'>Joh 5:22</a> represents Jesus as saying: "The Father judges no one, but has given all judgment to the Son." In the Parable of the Sheep and Goats it is the glorified Christ who is the judge (<a href='B:470 25:31-46'>Mat 25:31-46</a>). In Paul's speech at Athens it is said that God has appointed a day in which he will judge the world by Jesus (<a href='B:510 17:31'>Act 17:31</a>). In <a href='B:620 4:1'>2Ti 4:1</a> Jesus is the one who is about to judge the living and the dead.<p/>There are two answers to this apparent difficulty.<p/>First, the unity of the Father and the Son is such that there is no difficulty in ascribing the action of the one to the other. That is in fact what Paul does. In <a href='B:520 14:10'>Rom 14:10</a> he writes: "We shall all stand before the judgment seat of God." But in <a href='B:540 5:10'>2Co 5:10</a> he writes: "We must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ."<p/>Second, it may be that the real reason why God is the judge in John's Revelation is that the whole background of the book is Jewish; to a Jew, even when he became a Christian, God stood unique; and it would seem natural to him that God should be judge.<p/>As John tells the story, the judgment begins with the passing away of this present world; earth and sky flee from his presence. John is thinking in pictures which are very familiar in the Old Testament. God laid the foundations of the earth, and the heavens are the work of his hands. None the less it is still true that "they will perish... they will all wear out like a garment; thou changest them like raiment, and they pass away" (<a href='B:230 102:25-27'>Psa 102:25-27</a>). "The heavens will vanish like smoke, the earth will wear out like a garment" (<a href='B:290 51:6'>Isa 51:6</a>). "Heaven and earth will pass away" (<a href='B:480 13:31'>Mar 13:31</a>). "The heavens will pass away with a loud noise, and the elements will be dissolved with fire, and the earth and the works that are upon it will be burned up" (<a href='B:680 3:10'>2Pe 3:10</a>). The new man in Christ must have a new world in Christ.<p/>(2) The Final Judgment (<a href='B:730 20:11-15'>Rev 20:11-15</a> Continued)<p/>Now follows the judgment of mankind.<p/>It is the judgment of great and small. There is none so great as to escape the judgment of God, and none so unimportant as to fail to win his vindication.<p/>Two kinds of book are mentioned. The first contains the records of the deeds of men. This is a common idea in Scripture. "The court sat in judgment, says Daniel, "and the books were opened" (<a href='B:340 7:10'>Dan 7:10</a>). In Enoch the sealed books are opened before the Lord of the sheep (Enoch 90:20). The Apocalypse of Baruch foretells the day when "the books shall be opened in which are written the sins of all those who have sinned, and again also the treasuries in which the righteousness of all those who have been righteous in creation is gathered" (Baruch 24:1). When the present age passes away, the books will be opened before the face of the firmament, and all shall see together (4 <a href='B:150 6:20'>Ezr 6:20</a>).<p/>The idea is simply that a record of all men's deeds is kept by God. The symbolism is that all through life we are writing our own destiny; it is not so much that God judges a man as that a man writes his own judgment.<p/>The second book is the Book of Life. This, too, occurs often in Scripture. Moses is willing to be blotted out of the Book of Life if it will save the people (<a href='B:20 32:32'>Exo 32:32</a>). It is the prayer of the Psalmist that the wicked will be blotted out of the Book of the Living and not written with the righteous (<a href='B:230 69:28'>Psa 69:28</a>). Isaiah speaks of those who are written among the living (<a href='B:290 4:3'>Isa 4:3</a>). Paul speaks of his fellow-labourers whose names are in the Book of Life (Php_4:3). It is the promise of the Risen Christ to the Church at Sardis that the name of him who overcomes will not be blotted out of the Book of Life (<a href='B:730 3:5'>Rev 3:5</a>). Those whose names are not written in the Book of Life are given over to destruction (<a href='B:730 13:8'>Rev 13:8</a>). The idea behind this is that every ruler had a roll-book of living citizens under his control; and, of course, when a man died, his name was removed from the roll. Those whose names are in the Book of Life are those who are living, active citizens of the kingdom of God.<p/>At the time of judgment it is said that the sea will give up its dead. The point is twofold. First, in the ancient world burial was all important; if a man did not obtain burial, his spirit would wander, homeless, neither in earth nor in heaven. And, of course, those who died at sea could never be buried. John means that even such as these will appear before the judgment seat of God. Second, H. B. Swete puts the matter in a more general form. "The accidents of death, he says, "will not prevent any from appearing before the judge." No matter how a man dies, he will not escape his punishment nor lose his reward.<p/>Finally, Death and Hades are thrown into the lake of fire. As H. B. Swete puts it, these voracious monsters who have themselves devoured so many are in the end themselves destroyed. In the judgment those who are not in the Book of Life are condemned to the lake of fire with the Devil, their master, but for those whose names are in the Book of Life, death is for ever vanquished. 


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<b>THE NEW CREATION</b> (<a href='B:730 21:1'>Rev 21:1</a>)<p/><i> 21:1 And I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had gone; and the sea was no more.<p/></i><p/>John has seen the doom of the wicked, and now he sees the bliss of the blessed.<p/>The dream of a new heaven and a new earth was deep in Jewish thought. "Behold," said God to Isaiah, "I create new heavens and a new earth; and the former things shall not be remembered, or come into mind" (<a href='B:290 65:17'>Isa 65:17</a>). Isaiah speaks of the new heaven and the new earth which God will make, in which life will be one continual act of worship (<a href='B:290 66:22'>Isa 66:22</a>). This idea is equally strong between the Testaments. It is God's promise: "I will transform the heaven and make it an eternal blessing and light; and I will transform the earth and make it a blessing" (Enoch 45:4). There will be a new creation accomplished which will endure to eternity (Enoch 72:1). The first heaven will pass away, and the new heaven shall appear; the light of heaven will be seven times brighter; and the new creation will last for ever (Enoch 91:16). The Mighty One will shake creation only to renew it (Baruch 32:6). God will renew his creation (2Esdr 7:75).<p/>The picture is always there and its elements are always the same. Sorrow is to be forgotten; sin is to be vanquished; darkness is to be at an end; the temporariness of time is to turn into the everlastingness of eternity. This continuing belief is a witness to three things--to the unquenchable immortal longings in man's soul, to man's inherent sense of sin and to man's faith in God.<p/>In this vision of the future bliss we come on one of the most famous phrases in the Revelation--"And the sea was no more." This phrase has a double background.<p/>(i) It has a background in the great mythological beliefs of John's time. We have already seen that the Babylonian story of the creation of the world is of a long struggle between Marduk, the god of creation, and Tiamat, the dragon of chaos. In that story the sea, the waters beneath the firmament, became the dwelling-place of Tiamat. The sea was always an enemy. The Egyptians saw it as the power which swallowed up the waters of the Nile and left the fields barren.<p/>(ii) It has a much more human background. The ancient peoples hated the sea, even though, by the time of John, they were voyaging long and far. They did not possess the compass; and, therefore, as far as possible, they coasted along the shores. It is not till modern times that we come on people who rejoice in being sea-faring.<p/>Matthew Arnold spoke of "the salt, estranging sea." Dr. Johnson once remarked bitterly that no man who had the wit to get himself into gaol would ever choose to go to sea. There is an old story of a man who was weary of battling with the sea. He put an oar on his shoulder and set out with the intention of journeying inland until he reached people who knew so little of the sea that they asked him what strange thing he carried on his shoulder.<p/>The Sibylline Oracles (5: 447) say that in the last time the sea will be dried up. The Ascension of Moses (10: 6) says that the sea will return into the abyss. In Jewish dreams the end of the sea is the end of a force hostile to God and to man.<p/><b>(1) THE NEW JERUSALEM</b> (<a href='B:730 21:2'>Rev 21:2</a>)<p/><i> 21:2 And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, like a bride adorned for her husband.<p/></i><p/>Here, again, is a dream of the Jews which never died--the dream of the restoration of Jerusalem, the holy city. Once again it has a double background.<p/>(i) It has a background which is essentially Greek. One of the great contributions to the world's philosophical thought was Plato's doctrine of ideas or forms. He taught that in the invisible world there existed the perfect form or idea of everything upon earth, and that all things on earth were imperfect copies of the heavenly realities. If that be so, there is a heavenly Jerusalem of which the earthly Jerusalem is an imperfect copy. That is what Paul is thinking of when he speaks of the Jerusalem that is above (<a href='B:550 4:26'>Gal 4:26</a>), and also what is in the mind of the writer to the Hebrews when he speaks of the heavenly Jerusalem (<a href='B:650 12:22'>Heb 12:22</a>).<p/>That way of thought left its mark on Jewish visions between the Testaments. We read that in the Messianic Age the Jerusalem which is invisible will appear (2<a href='B:190 7:26'>Est 7:26</a>). The writer of 2 Esdras was, he says, given a vision of it in so far as it was possible for human eyes to bear the sight of the heavenly glory (2<a href='B:190 10:44-59'>Est 10:44-59</a>). In 2Baruch it is said that God made the heavenly Jerusalem before he made Paradise, that Adam saw it before he sinned, that it was shown in a vision to Abraham, that Moses saw it on Mount Sinai, and that it is now present with God (Bar_4:2-6).<p/>This conception of preexisting forms may seem strange. But at the back of it is the great truth that the ideal actually exists. It further means that God is the source of all ideals. The ideal is a challenge, which, even if it is not worked out in this world, can still be worked out in the world to come.<p/><b>(2) THE NEW JERUSALEM</b> (<a href='B:730 21:2'>Rev 21:2</a> <b>continued)</b><p/> (ii) The second background of the conception of the new Jerusalem is entirely Jewish. In his synagogue form of prayer the Jew still prays:<p/>And to Jerusalem thy city return with compassion, and dwell<p/>therein as thou hast promised; and rebuild her speedily in our<p/>days, a structure everlasting; and the throne of David speedily<p/>establish there. Blessed art thou, O Lord, the builder of<p/>Jerusalem.<p/>John's vision of the new Jerusalem uses and amplifies many of the dreams of the prophets. We shall set down some of these dreams and it will be clear at once how the Old Testament again and again finds its echo in the Revelation.<p/>Isaiah had his dream.<p/>"O afflicted one, storm-tossed, and not comforted, behold, I will<p/>set your stones in antimony, and lay your foundations with<p/>sapphires. I will make your pinnacles of agate, your gates of<p/>carbuncles, and all your wall of precious stones" (<a href='B:290 54:11-12'>Isa 54:11-12</a>).<p/>Foreigners shall build up your walls, and their kings shall<p/>minister to you.... Your gates shall be open continually; day<p/>and night they shall not be shut.... You shall suck the milk<p/>of nations, you shall suck the breast of kings.... Instead of<p/>bronze I will bring gold, and instead of iron I will bring silver;<p/>instead of wood, bronze, instead of stones, iron.... Violence<p/>shall no more be heard in your land, devastation or destruction<p/>within your borders; you shall call your walls Salvation, and your<p/>gates Praise. The sun shall be no more your light by day, nor for<p/>brightness shall the moon give light to you by night; but the Lord<p/>will be your everlasting light, and your God will be your glory.<p/>Your sun shall no more go down, nor your moon withdraw<p/>itself; for the Lord will be your everlasting light, and your days<p/>of mourning shall be ended (<a href='B:290 60:10-20'>Isa 60:10-20</a>).<p/>Haggai had his dream.<p/>The latter splendour of this house shall be greater than the<p/>former, says the Lord of hosts; and in this place I will give<p/>prosperity, says the Lord of hosts (<a href='B:440 2:9'>Hag 2:9</a>).<p/>Ezekiel had his dream of the rebuilt Jerusalem (<a href='B:330 40:1-49'>Eze 40:1-49</a> and <a href='B:330 48:1-35'>Eze 48:1-35</a>) in which we find even the picture of the twelve gates of the city (<a href='B:330 48:31-35'>Eze 48:31-35</a>).<p/>The writers between the Testaments had their dreams.<p/>The city which God loved he made more radiant than the stars<p/>and the sun and the moon; and he set it as the jewel of the<p/>world and made a Temple exceeding fair in its sanctuary, and<p/>fashioned it in size of many furlongs, with a giant tower,<p/>touching the very clouds, and seen of all, so that all the<p/>faithful and the righteous may see the glory of the invisible God,<p/>the vision of delight (The Sibylline Oracles 5: 420427).<p/>And the gates of Jerusalem shall be builded with sapphire and<p/>emerald,<p/>And all thy walls with precious stones,<p/>The towers of Jerusalem shall be builded with gold,<p/>And their battlements with pure gold,<p/>The streets of Jerusalem shall be paved<p/>With carbuncle and stones of Ophir,<p/>And the gates of Jerusalem shall utter hymns of gladness,<p/>And all her houses shall say, Hallelujah!<p/>(Tob_13:16-18).<p/>It is easy to see that the new Jerusalem was a constant dream; and that John lovingly collected the differing visions--the precious stones, the streets and buildings of gold, the ever-open gates, the light of God making unnecessary the light of the sun and the moon, the coming of the nations and the bringing of their gifts--into his own.<p/>Here is faith! Even when Jerusalem was obliterated, the Jews never lost confidence that God would restore it. True, they expressed their hopes in terms of material things; but these are merely the symbols of the certainty that there is eternal bliss for the faithful people of God.<p/><b>(1) FELLOWSHIP WITH GOD</b> (<a href='B:730 21:3-4'>Rev 21:3-4</a>)


text:
 And I heard a great voice from heaven. "Behold, it said, "the dwelling-place of God is with men, and he will dwell with them, and they will be his peoples, and God himself shall be with them; and he will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death will be no more, nor will there be any grief or crying, nor will there be any more pain, for the first things have gone."<p/></i><p/>Here is the promise of fellowship with God and all its precious consequences. The voice is that of one of the Angels of the Presence.<p/>God is to make his dwelling-place with men. The word used for dwelling-place is skene (<a href='S:G4633'>G4633</a>), literally a tent; but in religious use it had long since lost any idea of an impermanent residence. There are two main ideas here.<p/>(i) Skene (<a href='S:G4633'>G4633</a>) is the word used for the Tabernacle. Originally in the wilderness the Tabernacle was a tent, the skene (<a href='S:G4633'>G4633</a>) par excellence. This, then, means that God is to make his tabernacle with men for ever, to give his presence to men for ever. Here in this world and amidst the things of time our realisation of the presence of God is spasmodic; but in heaven we will be permanently aware of that presence.<p/>(ii) There are two words totally different in meaning but similar in sound which in early Christian thought became closely connected. Skene (<a href='S:G4633'>G4633</a>) is one; and the Hebrew shechinah, the glory of God, is the other. SKENE (<a href='S:G4633'>G4633</a>) --SHECHINAH (compare the Hebrew verb, shakan, to dwell, <a href='S:H7931'>H7931</a>) --the connection in sound brought it about that men could not hear the one without thinking of the other. As a result, to say that the skene (<a href='S:G4633'>G4633</a>) of God is to be with men immediately brought the thought that the shechinah (compare <a href='S:H7931'>H7931</a>) of God is to be with men. In the ancient times the shechinah (compare <a href='S:H7931'>H7931</a>) took the form of a luminous cloud which came and went. We read, for instance, of the cloud which filled the house at the dedication of Solomon's Temple (<a href='B:110 8:10-11'>1Ki 8:10-11</a>). In the new age the glory of God is not to be a transitory thing, but something which abides permanently with the people of God.<p/><b>(2) FELLOWSHIP WITH GOD</b> (<a href='B:730 21:3-4'>Rev 21:3-4</a> <b>continued)</b><p/> God's promise to make Israel his people and to be their God echoes throughout the Old Testament. "I will make my abode among you... and I will walk among you, and will be your God, and you shall be my people" (<a href='B:30 26:11-12'>Lev 26:11-12</a>). In Jeremiah's account of the new covenant the promise of God is: "I will be their God, and they shall be my people" (<a href='B:300 31:33'>Jer 31:33</a>). The promise to Ezekiel is: "My dwelling-place shall be with them; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people" (<a href='B:330 37:27'>Eze 37:27</a>). The highest promise of all is intimate fellowship with God, in which we can say: "I am my beloved's, and my beloved is mine" (SS 6:3).<p/>This fellowship with God in the golden age brings certain things. Tears and grief and crying and pain are gone. That, too, had been the dream of the prophets of the ancient days. "They shall obtain joy and gladness, said Isaiah of the pilgrims of the heavenly way, "and sorrow and sighing shall flee away" (<a href='B:290 35:10'>Isa 35:10</a>). "I will rejoice in Jerusalem, and be glad in my people; no more shall be heard in it the sound of weeping and the cry of distress" (<a href='B:290 65:19'>Isa 65:19</a>). Death, too, shall be gone. That, too, had been the dream of the ancient prophets. "He will swallow up death in victory; and the Lord God will wipe away tears from all faces" (<a href='B:290 25:8'>Isa 25:8</a>).<p/>This is a promise for the future. But even in this present world those who mourn are blessed, for they will be comforted, and death is swallowed up in victory for those who know Christ and the fellowship of his sufferings and the power of his Resurrection (<a href='B:470 5:4'>Mat 5:4</a>; Php_3:10).<p/><b>ALL THINGS NEW</b> (<a href='B:730 21:5-6'>Rev 21:5-6</a>)


text:
 And he who is seated upon the throne said: "Behold, I make all things new." And he said: "Write, for these are words that are trustworthy and true." And he said to me: "It is done. I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end. Without price I will give to the thirsty of the fountain of the water of life."<p/></i><p/>For the first time God himself speaks; he is the God who is able to make all things new. Again we are back among the dreams of the ancient prophets. Isaiah heard God say: "Remember not the former things, nor consider the things of old. Behold, I am doing a new thing" (<a href='B:290 43:18-19'>Isa 43:18-19</a>). This is the witness of Paul: "If any one is in Christ, he is a new creation" (<a href='B:540 5:17'>2Co 5:17</a>). God can take a man and re-create him, and will some day create a new universe for the saints whose lives he has renewed.<p/>It is not God but the Angel of the Presence who gives the command to write. These words must be taken down and remembered; they are true and absolutely to be relied upon.<p/>"I am Alpha and Omega, says God to John, "the beginning and the end." We have already come upon this claim by the risen Christ in <a href='B:730 1:8'>Rev 1:8</a>. Again John is hearing the voice that the great prophets had heard, "I am the first, and I am the last; besides me there is no God" (<a href='B:290 44:6'>Isa 44:6</a>). Alpha (<a href='S:G1'>G1</a>) is the first letter of the Greek alphabet and omega (<a href='S:G5598'>G5598</a>) the last. John goes on to amplify this statement. God is the beginning and the end. The word for "beginning" is arche (<a href='S:G746'>G746</a>), and does not simply mean first in point of time but first in the sense of the source of all things. The word for "end" is telos (<a href='S:G5056'>G5056</a>), and does not simply mean end in point of time but the goal. John is saying that all life begins in God and ends in God. Paul expressed the same thing when he said perhaps a little more philosophically: "For from him, and through him, and to him are all things" (<a href='B:520 11:36'>Rom 11:36</a>), and when he spoke of "one God and Father of us all, who is above all, and through all, and in all" (<a href='B:560 4:6'>Eph 4:6</a>).<p/>It would be impossible to say anything more magnificent about God. At first sight it might seem to remove God to such a distance that we are no more to him than the flies on the windowpane. But what comes next? "To the thirsty I will give water without price from the fountain of the water of life." All God's greatness is at the disposal of man. "God so loved that he gave..." (<a href='B:500 3:16'>Joh 3:16</a>). The splendour of God is used to satisfy the thirst of the longing heart.<p/><b>THE GLORY AND THE SHAME</b> (<a href='B:730 21:7-8'>Rev 21:7-8</a>)


text:
 "He who overcomes will enter into possession of these things, and I will be his God and he will be my son. But as for the cowards, the unbelieving, the polluted, the murderers, the fornicators, the sorcerers, the idolaters, and all the liars--their part is in the lake burning with fire and brimstone, which is the second death."<p/></i><p/>The bliss is not to everyone but only to him who remains faithful when everything seeks to seduce him from his loyalty.<p/>To such a man God makes the greatest promise of all--"I will be his God and he shall be my son." This promise, or something very near to it, was made in the Old Testament to three different people. First, it was made to Abraham. "I will establish my covenant between me and you and your descendants after you, God said to Abraham, "... to be God to you and your descendants" (<a href='B:10 17:7'>Gen 17:7</a>). Second, it was made to the son who was to inherit David's kingdom. "I will be his father, said God, "and he shall be my son" (<a href='B:100 7:14'>2Sa 7:14</a>). Third, it was made in a Psalm which the Jewish scholars always interpreted of the Messiah. "I will make him the first-born, the highest of the kings of the earth" (<a href='B:230 89:27'>Psa 89:27</a>). Here is a tremendous thing. The promise of God to those who overcome is the same that was made to Abraham the founder of the nation, to David on behalf of Solomon his son, and to the Messiah himself. There is no greater honour in all the universe than that which God gives to the man who is true to him.<p/>But there are those who are condemned. The cowards are those who loved ease and comfort more than they loved Christ, and who in the day of trial were ashamed to show whose they were and whom they served. The King James Version gives a wrong impression when it translates deilos (<a href='S:G1169'>G1169</a>) by "fearful." It is not fear that is condemned. The highest courage is to be desperately afraid and in spite of that to do the right thing and to hold fast to loyalty. What is condemned is the cowardice which denies Christ for safety's sake. The unbelieving are those who refused to accept the Gospel or those who with their lips accepted it, but by their lives showed that they did not believe it. The polluted are those who allowed themselves to be saturated by the abominations of the world. The murderers may well be those who in persecutions slaughtered the Christians. The fornicators are those who lived lives of immorality. Ephesus was full of sorcerers; <a href='B:510 19:19'>Act 19:19</a> tells how at the preaching of the name of Christ in the early days the magicians burned their books. The idolaters are those who worshipped the false gods of whom the world was full. The liars are those who were guilty of untruth and of the silence which is also a lie.<p/><b>THE CITY OF GOD</b> (<a href='B:730 21:9-27'>Rev 21:9-27</a>)<p/> It will be better to read the description of the city of God as a whole before we deal with it in detail.


text:
 9 There came to me one of the seven angels who have the seven bowls full of the seven last plagues, and he spoke with me. "Come, he said, "and I will show you the Bride, the wife of the Lamb." And he carried me away in the Spirit to a 10 great and lofty mountain, and showed me the holy city, Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, and it had the glory of God. 11 Its light was like a most precious stone, like a jasper stone, glittering like crystal. 12 It had a wall great and high with twelve gates, and at the gates twelve angels. There were names written on the 13 gates which are the names of the twelve tribes of the sons of Israel. On the east were three gates, and on the north were three gates, and on the south were three gates, and on the west were three gates. 14 The wall of the city had twelve foundations, and on them the twelve names of the twelve apostles of the Lamb. 15 He who was speaking with me had a golden measuring rod, that he might measure the city and its gates and its walls. 16 The city lies four-square, and its length is the same as its breadth. He measured the city with his measuring rod, and the measurement was twelve thousand stades. Its length and breadth and height are equal. And he measured its wall, 17 and the measurement was one hundred and forty-four cubits, by the measurement of a man, that is, of an angel. 18 The building material of the wall was jasper, and the city was of pure gold like pure glass. 19 The foundations of the wall of the city were adorned with every kind of precious stone. The first foundation was a jasper; the second, a sapphire; the third, a chalcedony; the fourth, 20 an emerald; the fifth, a sardonyx; the sixth, a carnelian; the seventh, a chrysolith; the eighth, a beryl; the ninth, a topaz; the tenth, a chrysoprase; the eleventh, a jacinth; the twelfth, an amethyst. 21 The twelve gates were twelve pearls; each one of the gates consisted of a single pearl. The street of the city was of pure gold, like transparent glass. 22 I saw no temple in it, for the Lord God, the Almighty, is its temple, and the Lamb. 23 The city has no need of the sun or the moon to shine for it, for the glory of God illumines it, and its lamp is the Lamb. 24 The nations will walk in its light, and the kings of the earth 25 will bring their glory to it. Its gates will never be shut by day, 26 for, as for night, there will be no night there. They shall bring 27 to it the glory and the honour of the nations; but nothing unclean shall enter into it, nor shall he who practises abominable things or uses falsehood, but only those who are written in the Lamb's Book of Life.<p/></i> The Bringer Of The Vision (<a href='B:730 21:9-10'>Rev 21:9-10</a>)<p/>The personality of the bringer of the vision of the heavenly Jerusalem must come as a surprise. He is one of the angels who had the seven bowls filled with the last seven plagues; and the last time we met such an angel he was the bringer of the vision of the destruction of Babylon, the great harlot. It is extraordinary that in <a href='B:730 17:1'>Rev 17:1</a> the invitation of the angel is: "Come, I will show you the judgment of the great harlot, and that in <a href='B:730 21:9'>Rev 21:9</a> the invitation, perhaps even of the same angel, is: "Come, I will show you the Bride, the wife of the Lamb."<p/>No one can say for certain what much of the symbolism of this chapter stands for. John must have meant something by making the same angel the bearer of such different messages. It may be that John wishes us to see that the servant of God does not choose his task but must do whatever God sends him to do, and must speak whatever word God gives him to speak.<p/>The angel, says John, carried him away in the Spirit to a high mountain. It is in this way that Ezekiel also describes his experience. "He brought me in the visions of God into the land of Israel, and set me down upon a very high mountain" (<a href='B:330 40:2'>Eze 40:2</a>). H. B. Swete points out that it is wrong to take this literally; the lifting up stands for the elevation of spirit in which a man sees the visions and hears the words which are sent to him by God.<p/>The City's Light (<a href='B:730 21:11'>Rev 21:11</a>)<p/>There is a certain difficulty of translation here. The word used for "light" is phoster (<a href='S:G5458'>G5458</a>). The normal Greek word for "light" is phos (<a href='S:G5457'>G5457</a>), and phoster (<a href='S:G5458'>G5458</a>) is normally the word used for the lights of heaven, the sun, the moon and the stars, for instance, in the Creation story (<a href='B:10 1:14'>Gen 1:14</a>). Does this, then, mean that the body which illumined the city was like a precious stone? Or does it mean that the radiance which played over all the city was like the glitter of a jasper?<p/>We think the word must describe the radiance over the city; it is later quite distinctly said that the city needs no heavenly body like the sun or the moon to give it light, because God is its light.<p/>What, then, is the symbolism? H. B. Swete would find a hint in Php_2:15. There Paul says of the Christians at Philippi: "You shine as lights in the world." The holy city is inhabited by thousands and thousands of the saints of God, and it may well be that it is the light of these saintly lives which gives it this glittering glow.<p/>The Wall And The Gates Of The City (<a href='B:730 21:12'>Rev 21:12</a>)<p/>Round the city is a great high wall. Again John is thinking in terms of the prophetic pictures of the re-created Jerusalem. The song of the land of Judah will be: "We have a strong city; God sets up salvation as walls and bulwarks" (<a href='B:290 26:1'>Isa 26:1</a>). Zechariah hears God say: "I will be to her a wall of fire round about" (<a href='B:450 2:5'>Zec 2:5</a>). The simplest interpretation of the wall is that it is "the insurmountable bulwark of faith." Faith is the wall behind which the saints of God are secure against the assaults of the world, the flesh and the devil.<p/>In the wall are twelve gates, and on the gates the names of the twelve tribes of the sons of Israel. The word for gate is interesting. It is not the normal word which is pule (<a href='S:G4439'>G4439</a>) ; it is pulon (<a href='S:G4440'>G4440</a>). The pulon could be either of two things. A large house was built round an open courtyard. It opened on to the street by a great gate in the outer wall, leading into a spacious vestibule. That could be the picture here. Pulon (<a href='S:G4440'>G4440</a>) can also mean the gate-tower in a great city, like the gate leading into a battlemented castle.<p/>There are two things to note.<p/>(i) There are twelve gates. Surely this stands for the catholicity of the Church. A man can come by many roads into the kingdom, for "there are as many ways to the stars as there are men to climb them."<p/>(ii) On the gates are the names of the twelve tribes. Surely this stands for the continuity of the Church. The God who revealed himself to the patriarchs is the God who also, and far more fully, revealed himself in Jesus Christ; the God of the Old Testament is the God of the New Testament.<p/>The Gates Of The City (<a href='B:730 21:13'>Rev 21:13</a>)<p/>There are three gates on each of the four sides of the city of God. Part at least of that picture John got from Ezekiel (<a href='B:330 48:30-35'>Eze 48:30-35</a>). What John meant to symbolize by this arrangement other than the catholicity of the Church we do not know. There is one symbolic interpretation which was unlikely to be in his mind, but which is none the less very beautiful and very comforting.<p/>There are three gates on the east. The east is the place of the rising sun and the beginning of the day. These gates could represent the way into the holy city of those who find Christ in the glad morning of their days.<p/>There are three gates on the north. The north is the cold land with a certain chill in it. These gates could stand for the way into the holy city of those who come to Christianity by the intellectual exercise of thought, and have found the faith through their minds rather than through their hearts.<p/>There are three gates on the south. The south is the warm land, where the wind is gentle and the climate soft. These gates could stand for the way into the holy city of those who have come to Christ through their emotions, whose love ran over at the sight of the cross.<p/>There are three gates on the west. The west is the land of the dying day and the setting sun. These gates could stand for the way into the holy city of those who come to Christ in the evening of their days.<p/>The Measuring Of The City (<a href='B:730 21:15-17'>Rev 21:15-17</a>)<p/>John takes his picture of the man with the measuring rod from <a href='B:330 40:3'>Eze 40:3</a>.<p/>(i) We must note the city's shape. It was four-square. It was common enough for cities to be built in the form of a square; both Babylon and Nineveh were like that. But the holy city was not only square; it was in the form of a perfect cube. The length, breadth and height were the same. This is significant. The cube was the symbol of perfection. Both Plato and Aristotle refer to the fact that in Greece the good man was called "four-square" (Plato, Protagoras 339 B; Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics 1: 10: 11 ; Rhetoric 3:11).<p/>It was the same with the Jews. The altar of the burnt offering, the altar of the incense, and the High Priest's breast-plate were all in the form of a cube (<a href='B:20 27:1'>Exo 27:1</a>; <a href='B:20 30:2'>Exo 30:2</a>; <a href='B:20 28:16'>Exo 28:16</a>). Again and again this shape occurs in Ezekiel's visions of the new Jerusalem and the new temple (<a href='B:330 41:21'>Eze 41:21</a>; <a href='B:330 43:16'>Eze 43:16</a>; <a href='B:330 45:2'>Eze 45:2</a>; <a href='B:330 48:20'>Eze 48:20</a>). But most important of all, in Solomon's temple the Holy of Holies was a perfect cube (<a href='B:110 6:20'>1Ki 6:20</a>).<p/>There is no doubt of the symbolism which John intends. He intends us to see that the whole of the holy city is the Holy of Holies, the dwelling-place of God.<p/>(ii) We must note the city's dimensions. Each side of the city was twelve thousand stades (compare <a href='S:G4712'>G4712</a>). A stade is very nearly a furlong; therefore, each side was 1,500 miles long, and the total area of the city was 2,250,000 square miles. The rabbinic dreams of the re-created Jerusalem were vast enough. It was said that it would reach to Damascus and would cover the whole of Palestine. But a city with that area would stretch nearly from London to New York. Surely we are meant to see that in the holy city there is room for everyone. Men are so apt to limit their Churches, to shut out those who do not believe as they do or who do not administer as they do.<p/>Strangely enough it is different when we come to the wall. The wall is 144 cubits high, that is, 266 feet, not very high. The wall of Babylon was 300 feet high, and the walls of the porch of Solomon's temple were 180 feet high. There is no comparison between the height of the wall and the size of the city. Again there is symbolism here. The wall cannot be for defence, for all hostile beings, spiritual and human, have been obliterated or cast into the lake of fire. The only thing the wall can do is delimit the area of the city; and the fact that it is so low shows that delimitation is comparatively unimportant. God is much more eager to bring men in than to shut them out--and his Church must be the same.<p/>The Precious Stones Of The City (<a href='B:730 21:18-21'>Rev 21:18-21</a>)<p/>The city itself was of pure gold, so pure that it seemed like transparent glass. It is possible that John is here accentuating a feature of the earthly Jerusalem. Josephus describes Herod's temple: "Now the outward face of the temple in its front lacked nothing that was likely to surprise either men's minds or their eyes; for it was covered all over with plates of gold of great weight, and, at the first rising of the sun, reflected back a very fiery splendour, and made those who forced themselves to look upon it to turn away their eyes, just as they would at the sun's own rays. But this temple appeared to strangers, when they were at a distance, like a mountain covered with snow, for as to those parts that were not golden, they were exceeding white" (Josephus: Wars of the Jews 5:5:6).<p/>John goes on to speak of the twelve foundations of the city. Between the twelve gates there were twelve spaces, and the idea is that between these spaces there was one vast foundation stone. Again John may have been thinking of the vast stones in the foundations of the Jerusalem Temple. In the passage which we have just quoted Josephus speaks of stones in the Temple foundation walls of almost 70 feet in length, 8 feet in height, and 9 feet in breadth. In verse 14 John has said that the stones are inscribed with the names of the twelve apostles. They were both Jesus' first followers and his ambassadors, and they were literally the foundations of the Church.<p/>In the city of God these foundation stones were all precious stones. The jasper was not the modern opaque jasper but a translucent rock crystal, green in colour. The sapphire appears in the Old Testament story as the stone of the paving on which God stood (<a href='B:20 24:10'>Exo 24:10</a>). Again, it was not the modern sapphire. Pliny describes it as sky-blue, flecked with gold. It was most likely the stone now known as lapis lazuli. The chalcedony was a green silicate of copper, found in mines near Chalcedon. It is described as being like the sheen of green on a dove's neck or in a peacock's tail. The emerald was the modern emerald, which Pliny describes as the greenest of all green stones. The sardonyx was an onyx in which the white was broken by layers of red and brown; it was specially used for cameos. The sard or carnelian took its name from Sardis. It was blood-red, and was the commonest of all stones used for engraving gems. The identification of the chrysolite is uncertain. Its Hebrew name means the stone of Tarshish. Pliny describes it as shining with a golden radiance. It could be a yellow beryl or a gold-coloured jasper. The beryl was like an emerald; the best stones were sea-blue or sea-green. The topaz was a transparent, greenish-gold stone, very highly valued by the Hebrews. Job speaks of the topaz of Ethiopia (<a href='B:220 28:19'>Job 28:19</a>). The jacinth is described by ancient writers as being a violet, bluish-purple stone. It is likely that it was the equivalent of the modern sapphire. The amethyst is described as being very similar to the jacinth, but more brilliant.<p/>Have these stones any symbolism?<p/>(i) It may be noted that eight of them are the same as the stones in the breast-plate of the High Priest (<a href='B:20 28:17'>Exo 28:17</a>). John may simply have used the breast-plate as his model.<p/>(ii) It may well be that the only intention of John is to stress the splendour of the city of God in which even the foundations were stones beyond price.<p/>(iii) There is another interesting possibility. In the east there was the idea of the city of the gods in the skies. There the gods dwelt; the sun and the moon and the stars were its lights; the Milky Way was its great street; there were twelve gates through which the stars went in and out upon their business. Connected with the city of the gods there are the signs of the Zodiac, the signs of the parts of the heavens through which the sun passes. The curious thing is that the signs of the Zodiac have as their corresponding precious stones exactly these twelve.<p/>The table is as follows:<p/>The Ram -- amethyst.<p/>The Bull -- jacinth.<p/>The Twins -- chrysoprase.<p/>The Crab -- topaz.<p/>The Lion -- beryl.<p/>The Virgin -- chrysolite.<p/>The Balance -- carnelian.<p/>The Scorpion -- sardonyx.<p/>The Archer -- emerald.<p/>The Goat -- chalcedony.<p/>The Water-carrier -- sapphire.<p/>The Fishes -- jasper.<p/>There is at least the possibility that John was thinking of the city of God as the consummation of the old idea of the city of the Gods, but far outshining it.<p/>But there is one curious point. If that be so, John gives the signs of the Zodiac in precisely the reverse order! What the symbolism of that would be it is impossible to tell, unless it is John's way of saying that the city of the gods is made new in the city of God.<p/>The most staggering use of precious stones in this picture is that the gates of the city of God each consist of one vast pearl. In the ancient world pearls were of all stones most valued. All his life the merchantman would seek the pearl of great price and then count it worth selling all his possessions to buy it (<a href='B:470 13:46'>Mat 13:46</a>). Gates of pearl are a symbol of unimaginable beauty and unassessable riches.<p/>The Presence Of God (<a href='B:730 21:22-23'>Rev 21:22-23</a>)<p/>In <a href='B:730 21:22'>Rev 21:22</a> John lays down a unique feature of the city of God; in it there is no temple. When we remember how precious the Temple was to the Jews, this is amazing. But we have already noted that the city is built in the shape of a perfect cube, indicating that it itself is the Holy of Holies. The city needs no temple because the presence of God is continually there.<p/>Here is symbolism which is plain for all to see. Buildings do not make a Church nor liturgy, nor form of government, nor method of ordination to the ministry. The one thing which makes a Church is the presence of Jesus Christ. Without that there can be no such thing as a Church; with that any gathering of people is a real Church.<p/>The city of God needed no created light, because God the uncreated light was in the midst of her. "The Lord, said Isaiah, "will be your everlasting light" (<a href='B:290 60:19-20'>Isa 60:19-20</a>). "In thy light, said the Psalmist, "do we see light" (<a href='B:230 36:9'>Psa 36:9</a>). Only when we see things in the light of God, do we see things as they are. Some things which seem vastly important are seen to be unimportant when seen in the light of God. Some things which seem permissible enough are seen to be dangerous when seen in the light of God. Some things which seem unbearable are seen to be a path to glory when seen in the light of God.<p/>The Whole Earth For God (<a href='B:730 21:24-27'>Rev 21:24-27</a>)<p/>A passage like this enables us--and even compels us--to redress a wrong which is often done to Jewish thought. Here is a picture of all nations coming to God and of all kings bringing him their gifts. In other words, here is a picture of universal salvation. It is often said that the Jews looked for nothing but the destruction of the Gentiles. It is true that we find sayings like: "God created the Gentiles to be fuel for the fires of hell." It is true that there is a strain of Jewish thought which expected the annihilation, or at least the enslavement, of the Gentiles; but there is much on the other side, and voice after voice speaks of the time when all men shall know and love God.<p/>Isaiah has a picture of the day when all nations will go up to Mount Sion to be taught the law and to learn to walk in the ways of God (<a href='B:290 2:2-4'>Isa 2:2-4</a>). God will set up an ensign to which all the nations will come (<a href='B:290 11:12'>Isa 11:12</a>). It is God's word of privilege to Israel: "I will give you for a light to the nations, that my salvation may reach to the ends of the earth" (<a href='B:290 49:6'>Isa 49:6</a>). The isles will wait upon God and in his arm will they trust (<a href='B:290 51:5'>Isa 51:5</a>). Nations who never knew God will run to him (<a href='B:290 55:5'>Isa 55:5</a>). The sons of the stranger will learn to love God and to serve him. God will gather others to him (<a href='B:290 56:6-8'>Isa 56:6-8</a>). It is Israel's task to declare God's glory among the Gentiles (<a href='B:290 66:19'>Isa 66:19</a>). The ends of the earth are invited to look to God and to be saved (<a href='B:290 45:22'>Isa 45:22</a>). All nations shall be gathered to Jerusalem, and shall recognize it as the throne of the Lord, and will no more stubbornly follow their evil heart (<a href='B:300 3:17'>Jer 3:17</a>). The Gentiles will come to God from the ends of the earth, confessing and repenting of the previous errors of their ways (<a href='B:300 16:19-21'>Jer 16:19-21</a>). All peoples, nations and languages will serve the one who is like a son of man (<a href='B:340 7:14'>Dan 7:14</a>). All men shall worship God, everyone from his place, even all the isles of the heathen (<a href='B:430 2:11'>Zep 2:11</a>). God will give all men a pure language in which they may with one consent call upon him (<a href='B:430 3:9'>Zep 3:9</a>). All flesh will be silent before God (<a href='B:450 2:13'>Zec 2:13</a>). Many people and the inhabitants of many cities will come to Jerusalem. People of all races and tongues shall "take hold of the robe of a Jew, saying, Let us go with you, for we have heard that God is with you" (<a href='B:450 8:20-23'>Zec 8:20-23</a>). The day will come when the Lord will be king over all the earth; in that day there will be one Lord (<a href='B:450 14:9'>Zec 14:9</a>).<p/>What is true of the Old Testament is true of the literature between the Testaments. The vision in Tobit is:<p/>A bright light shall shine unto all the ends of the earth; Many nations shall come from afar, And the inhabitants of the utmost ends of the earth unto thy holy<p/>name; With their gifts in their hands unto the king of heaven (Tob_13:11).<p/>All the nations which are in the whole earth, all shall turn and fear God truly, all shall leave their idols (Tob_14:6).<p/>Enoch writes nobly of God's chosen one:<p/>He shall be a stall to the righteous whereon to stay themselves<p/>and not fall,<p/>And he shall be a light of the Gentiles,<p/>And the hope of those who are troubled of heart.<p/>All who dwell on earth shall fall down and worship before him,<p/>And will praise and bless and celebrate with song the Lord of<p/>Spirits (Enoch 48:4-5).<p/>The writer of Enoch hears the voice of God say: "All the children of men shall become righteous, and all nations shall offer adoration, and shall praise me, and shall worship me" (Enoch 10:21).<p/>The Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs is full of this universal hope. When the Messiah comes "in his priesthood the Gentiles shall be multiplied in knowledge upon the earth, and enlightened in the grace of the Lord" (Testament of Levi 18:9). It is the word of God: "If ye work that which is good, my children, both men and angels will bless you; and God shall be glorified among the Gentiles through you." It is Israel's task "to gather the righteous from among the Gentiles" (Testament of Naphtali 8:3, 4). God will save all Israel and all the Gentiles (Testament of Asher 7:3). The Sibylline Oracles has a noble passage which tells of the reaction of the Gentiles when they see the goodness of God to Israel:<p/>Then all the isles and the cities shall say, How doth the Eternal<p/>love those men! For all things work in sympathy with them and<p/>help them, the heaven, and God's chariot the sun, and the moon.<p/>A sweet strain shall they utter from their mouths in hymns. Come,<p/>let us all fall upon the earth and supplicate the Eternal King, the<p/>mighty, everlasting God. Let us make procession to his Temple,<p/>for he is the sole Potentate. And let us all ponder the law of the<p/>Most High God, who is the most righteous of all upon the earth.<p/>But we had gone astray from the path of the Eternal, and with<p/>foolish heart worshipped the work of men's hands, idols and images<p/>of men that are dead (Sibylline Oracles 3: 710-723).<p/>Nations shall come from the ends of the earth to see the glory of God (Wis 17:34).<p/>When John pictured the nations walking in the light of the city of God and the kings bringing their gifts to it, he was foretelling the consummation of a hope which was always in the hearts of the greatest of his countrymen.<p/>Reception And Rejection (<a href='B:730 21:24-27'>Rev 21:24-27</a> Continued)<p/>We gather up three further points before we leave this chapter.<p/>(i) More than once John insists that there will be no night in the city of God. The ancient peoples, like children, were afraid of the dark. In the new world the frightening dark will be no more, for the presence of God will bring eternal light. Even in this world of space and time, where God is, the night is as bright as the day (<a href='B:230 139:12'>Psa 139:12</a>).<p/>H. B. Swete sees further symbolism here. In the city of God there will be no darkness. Again and again it has happened that an age of brilliance has been followed by an age of darkness. But in the new age the darkness will be gone and there will be nothing but light.<p/>(ii) John, like the ancient prophets, repeatedly speaks of the Gentiles and their kings bringing their gifts to God. It is true that the nations did bring their gifts to the Church. The Greeks brought the power of their intellect. To them, as Plato said, "the unexamined life was the life not worth living, and so the unexamined faith was the faith not worth having. To the Greeks we owe theology. The Romans were the greatest experts in government the world has ever seen. To the Church they brought their ability to organize and to administer and to formulate law. When a man enters the Church, he must bring his gift with him; the writer his power in words, the artist his power in colour, the sculptor his mastery of line and form and mass, the musician his music, the craftsman his craft. There is no gift which Christ cannot use.<p/>(iii) The chapter ends with a threat. Those who will not lay aside the evil of their ways are barred from the city of God. There is a sinner who sins against his will; there is a sinner who deliberately sins. It is not the repentant sinner, but the defiant sinner, who is barred from the city of God. 


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 And he showed me the river of the water of life, shining like crystal, coming out from the throne of God and of the Lamb, in the midst of the city street. And on either side of the river was the tree of life, which produced twelve kinds of fruit, rendering its fruit according to each month; and the leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations.<p/></i><p/>So far the description has been of the exterior of the holy city; now the scene moves inside.<p/>First, there is the river of the water of life. This picture has many sources in the Old Testament. At its back is the river which watered the Garden of Eden and made it fruitful (<a href='B:10 2:8-16'>Gen 2:8-16</a>). Still closer is Ezekiel's picture of the river which issued from the Temple (<a href='B:330 47:1-7'>Eze 47:1-7</a>). The Psalmist sings of the river whose streams make glad the city of God (<a href='B:230 46:4'>Psa 46:4</a>). "A fountain," says Joel, "shall come forth from the house of the Lord" (<a href='B:360 3:18'>Joe 3:18</a>). "Living waters, says Zechariah, "shall flow out from Jerusalem" (<a href='B:450 14:8'>Zec 14:8</a>). In Second Enoch there is the picture of a river in Paradise, which issues in the third heaven, which flows from beneath the tree of life, and which divides into four streams of honey, milk, wine, and oil (2Enoch 8:5).<p/>Closely allied with this is the picture so common in Scripture of the fountain of life; we have it in <a href='B:730 7:17'>Rev 7:17</a>; <a href='B:730 21:6'>Rev 21:6</a> in the Revelation. It is Jeremiah's complaint that the people have forsaken God who is the fountain of living waters to hew themselves out broken cisterns which can hold no water (<a href='B:300 2:13'>Jer 2:13</a>). The warning in Enoch is:<p/>Woe to you who drink water from every fountain,<p/>For suddenly shall ye be consumed and wither away,<p/>Because ye have forsaken the fountain of life (Enoch 96:6).<p/>The mouth of a righteous man is a well of life (<a href='B:240 10:11'>Pro 10:11</a>). The teaching of the wise is a fountain of life (<a href='B:240 13:14'>Pro 13:14</a>). The fear of the Lord is a fountain of life (<a href='B:240 14:27'>Pro 14:27</a>). Wisdom is a fountain of life to him who has it (<a href='B:240 16:22'>Pro 16:22</a>). With God, says the Psalmist, is the fountain of life (<a href='B:230 36:9'>Psa 36:9</a>). "God, said the rabbis in their dreams of the golden age, "will produce a river from the Holy of Holies, beside which every kind of delicate fruits will grow."<p/>H. B. Swete identifies the river of life with the Spirit. In the Fourth Gospel Jesus says: "He who believes in me, out of his heart shall flow rivers of living water." John goes on to explain: "This he said about the Spirit which those who believed in him were to receive" (<a href='B:500 7:38-39'>Joh 7:38-39</a>).<p/>But it may well be that there is something simpler here. Those who live in a civilization in which the turn of a tap will bring cold, clear water in any quantity can scarcely understand how precious water was in the East. In the hot lands water was, and is, literally life. And the river of life may well stand for the abundant life God provides for his people which is there for the taking.<p/><b>THE TREE OF LIFE</b> (<a href='B:730 22:1-2'>Rev 22:1-2</a> <b>continued)</b><p/> In this passage there is an ambiguity of punctuation. In the midst of the city street may be taken, not as the end of the first sentence, but as the beginning of the second. It will then be not the river which is in the midst of the street but the tree of life. Taking the phrase with the first sentence seems to give the better picture.<p/>John takes his picture of the tree of life from two sources--from the tree in the Garden of Eden (<a href='B:10 3:6'>Gen 3:6</a>); and even more from Ezekiel. "And on the banks, on both sides of the river, there will grow all kinds of trees for food. Their leaves will not wither nor their fruit fail, but they will bear fresh fruit every month. Their fruit will be for food, and their leaves for healing" (<a href='B:330 47:12'>Eze 47:12</a>). Here again the rabbinic dreams of the future are very close. One runs: "In the age to come God will create trees which will produce fruit in any month; and the man who eats from them will be healed."<p/>The tree gives many and varied fruits. Surely in that we may see the symbolism of the fruit of the Spirit (<a href='B:550 5:22-23'>Gal 5:22-23</a>). In the different fruit for each month of the year may we not see symbolized that in the life which God gives there is a special grace for each age from the cradle to the grave? The tree of life is no longer forbidden; it is there in the midst of the city for all to take. Nor are its fruits confined to the Jews; its leaves are for the healing of the nations. Only in the Spirit of God can the wounds and the breaches of the nations be healed.<p/><b>THE BEAUTY OF HOLINESS</b> (<a href='B:730 22:3-5'>Rev 22:3-5</a>)


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 No longer shall there be any accursed thing. And the throne of God and of the Lamb shall be in it, and his servants shall worship him, and shall see his face, and his name shall be on their foreheads. And night will be no more, for they have no need of the light of a lamp, or the light of a sun, for the Lord God will be a light to them, and they will reign for ever and ever.<p/></i><p/>Here is the final culmination of the description of the city of God.<p/>There will be no accursed thing there. That is to say, there will be no more of the pollutions which harm the Christian life.<p/>God's servants shall see his face. The promise will come true that the pure in heart will see God (<a href='B:470 5:8'>Mat 5:8</a>). We may best understand the greatness of that promise by remembering that the Christian is promised a privilege which was denied even to Moses to whom God's word was: "You cannot see my face; for man shall not see me and live" (<a href='B:20 33:20'>Exo 33:20</a>; <a href='B:20 33:23'>Exo 33:23</a>). It is in Christ alone that men can see God.<p/>The sight of God produces two things. It produces the perfect worship; where God is always seen, all life becomes an act of worship. It produces the perfect consecration; the inhabitants of the city will have the mark of God upon their foreheads, showing that they belong absolutely to him.<p/>John returns to his vision that in the city of God there can never be any darkness nor need of any other light, for the presence of God is there.<p/>The vision ends with the promise that the people of God will reign for ever and ever. In perfect submission to him they will find perfect freedom and the only true royalty.<p/><b>FINAL WORDS</b> (<a href='B:730 22:6-9'>Rev 22:6-9</a>)


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 And he said to me: "These words are trustworthy and true, for the Lord, the God of the spirits of the prophets, has sent his angel to show to his servants the things which must speedily happen."<p/>"And, behold, I am coming soon. Blessed is he who keeps the words of the prophecy of this book."<p/>It is I John who am the hearer and the seer of these things. And, when I heard and saw them, I fell down to worship before the feet of the angel who was showing them to me. And he said to me: "See that you do not do this. I am your fellow-servant, and the fellow-servant of your brothers the prophets, and of those who keep the words of this book. Worship God."<p/></i><p/>What remains of the last chapter of the Revelation is curiously disjointed. Things are set down without any apparent order; there are repetitions of what has gone before; and it is often very difficult to be sure who is the actual speaker. There are two possibilities. It may be that John is deliberately sounding again many of the themes which run through his book, and bringing on the stage many of the characters for a final message. It is perhaps more likely that he did not finally set in order this last chapter and that we have it in unfinished form. We have three speakers.<p/>The first is one of the angels who have been the interpreters of the divine things to John. Once again he stresses the truth of all that John has seen and heard. "The God of the spirits of the prophets" means the God who inspired the minds of the prophets. Therefore the messages John received came from the same God as inspired the great prophets of the Old Testament, and must be treated with equal seriousness.<p/>The second speaker is Jesus Christ himself. He reiterates that his return is not to be long delayed. Then he pronounces his blessing on the man who reads and obeys the words of John's book. Swete aptly calls this "the felicitation of the devout student." The devout student is the best of all students. There are too many who are devout, but not students; they will not accept the discipline of learning and even look with suspicion upon the further knowledge which study brings. There are also too many who are students, but not devout; they are interested too much in intellectual knowledge and too little in prayer and in service of their fellow-men.<p/>The last speaker is John. He identifies himself as the author of the book. Then, strangely enough, he delivers exactly the same warning against angel worship as in <a href='B:730 19:10'>Rev 19:10</a>. Either John would have removed this passage as a needless repetition, if he had had opportunity fully to revise his book; or he was so aware of the danger of angel worship that he believed it necessary to give the same warning twice. He certainly leaves us in no doubt that worship of angels is wrong and that worship must be given to God alone.<p/><b>THE TIME IS NEAR AND THE TIME IS PAST</b> (<a href='B:730 22:10-11'>Rev 22:10-11</a>)<p/><i> 22:10,11 And he said to me: "Do not seal the words of the prophecy of this book; for the time is near. Let the wrong-doer continue in his wrong-doing; let him who is filthy continue in his filthiness; let the righteous man continue in his righteousness; let him who is dedicated to God continue in his dedication."<p/></i><p/>This passage insists that the coming of Christ is close at hand; it must be the Risen Christ who is speaking.<p/>In the older Apocalypses, written between the Testaments, the instruction is always to seal them and lay them up for a distant future. In Daniel, for instance, we read: "Seal up the vision, for it pertains to many days hence" (<a href='B:340 8:26'>Dan 8:26</a>). But now it is not the time to seal but it is the time to open and read; for the coming of Christ will take place at any moment.<p/>What, then, is the meaning of this curious passage which seems to say that men must remain as they are? There are two possibilities.<p/>(i) There comes a time when it is too late to change. In Daniel we read: "The wicked shall do wickedly" (<a href='B:340 12:10'>Dan 12:10</a>). As Ezekiel had it: "He that will hear, let him hear; and he that will refuse to hear, let him refuse" (<a href='B:330 3:27'>Eze 3:27</a>). A man can so long refuse the way of Christ that in the end he cannot take it. That is the sin against the Holy Spirit.<p/>(ii) The ancient commentator, Andreas, says that the Risen Christ is saying: "Let each man do what pleases him; I will not force his choice." This, then, would be another warning that every man is writing his own destiny.<p/><b>THE CLAIMS OF CHRIST</b> (<a href='B:730 22:12-13'>Rev 22:12-13</a>)<p/><i> 22:12,13 Behold, I am coming soon, and I have my reward with me, to render to each man, as his work is. I am Alpha and Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end.<p/></i><p/>The Risen Christ once again announces his speedy coming; and he makes two great claims.<p/>(i) He has his reward with him and will render to every man according to his work. H. B. Swete says: "Christ speaks as the Great Steward, who in the eventide of the world will call the labourers to receive their day's wages."<p/>(ii) He is Alpha and Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end. This is a repetition of titles used in <a href='B:730 1:17'>Rev 1:17</a>; <a href='B:730 2:8'>Rev 2:8</a>; <a href='B:730 21:6'>Rev 21:6</a>. There is more than one idea here.<p/>(a) There is the idea of completeness. The Greeks used from alpha (<a href='S:G1'>G1</a>) to omega (<a href='S:G5598'>G5598</a>) and the Hebrews from aleph to tau to indicate completeness. For instance, Abraham kept the whole Law from aleph to tau. Here is the symbol that Jesus Christ has everything within himself and needs nothing from any other source.<p/>(b) There is the idea of eternity. He includes in himself all time, for he is the first and the last.<p/>(c) There is the idea of authority. The Greeks said that Zeus was the beginning, the middle, and the end. The Jewish rabbis took over this idea and applied it to God, with their own interpretation. They said that, since God was the beginning, he received his power from no one; since he was the middle, he shared his power with no one; and since he was the end, he never handed over his power to anyone.<p/><b>THE ACCEPTED AND THE REJECTED</b> (<a href='B:730 22:14-15'>Rev 22:14-15</a>)<p/><i> 22:14,15 Blessed are those who wash their robes, that they may have the right to the tree of life, and that they may enter into the city by the gates. Outside are the dogs and the sorcerers and the fornicators and the murderers and the idolaters and everyone who loves and acts falsehood.<p/></i><p/>(i) Those who wash their robes have the right of entry into the city of God; the King James Version has: Blessed are they that do his commandments. In Greek the two phrases would be very like each other. Those who have washed their robes is hoi (<a href='S:G3588'>G3588</a>) plunontes (<a href='S:G4150'>G4150</a>) tas (<a href='S:G3588'>G3588</a>) stolas (<a href='S:G4749'>G4749</a>), and those that do his commandments is hoi (<a href='S:G3588'>G3588</a>) poiountes (<a href='S:G4160'>G4160</a>) tas (<a href='S:G3588'>G3588</a>) entolas (<a href='S:G1785'>G1785</a>). In the early Greek manuscripts all the words are written in capital letters and there is no space left between them. If we set down these two phrases in English capital letters, we see how closely they resemble each other.<p/>HOIPLUNONTESTASSTOLAS<p/>HOIPOIOUNTESTASENTOLAS<p/>"Those who have washed their robes" is the reading of the best manuscripts, but it is easy to see how a scribe could make a mistake in copying and substitute the more usual phrase.<p/>This phrase shows man's part in salvation. It is Jesus Christ who in his Cross has provided that grace by which alone man can be forgiven; but man has to appropriate that sacrifice. To take a simple analogy, we can supply soap and water, but we cannot compel a person to use them. Those who enter into the city of God are those who have accepted the sacrifice of Jesus Christ.<p/>(ii) There follows the list of those who are debarred from the city of God. We have already considered a very similar list in <a href='B:730 21:8'>Rev 21:8</a> of those who were cast into the lake of fire. The new phrase here is the dogs. This can have two meanings.<p/>(i) The dog was the symbol for everything that was savage and unclean. H. B. Swete says: "No one who has watched the dogs that prowl in the quarters of an eastern city will wonder at the contempt and disgust which the word suggests to the oriental mind." That was why the Jews called the Gentiles dogs. There is a rabbinic saying: "Whoever eats with an idolator is the same as he who would eat with a dog. Who is a dog? He who is not circumcised." Andreas suggests that the dogs are not only the shameless and the unbelieving, but also Christians who after their baptism "return to their vomit." The dog may, then, be a symbol of all that is disgusting.<p/>(ii) But there is another possibility. There is a strange phrase in <a href='B:50 23:18'>Deu 23:18</a>. The full verse runs: "You shall not bring the hire of a harlot or the wages of a dog into the house of the Lord your God in payment for any vow." The first part is clear enough. It is forbidden to offer to God money that has been made by prostitution. But the wages of a dog is more difficult. The point is this. In the ancient temples there were not only female sacred prostitutes, there were also male sacred prostitutes; and these male prostitutes were commonly called dogs. Dog can denote a thoroughly immoral person, and that may be its meaning here.<p/>Every one who loves and acts falsehood is shut out. Here is an echo of the Psalmist: "No man who practises deceit shall dwell in my house; no man who utters lies shall continue in my presence" (<a href='B:230 101:7'>Psa 101:7</a>).<p/><b>THE GUARANTEE OF TRUTH</b> (<a href='B:730 22:16'>Rev 22:16</a>)<p/><i> 22:16 I, Jesus, sent my angel to you to testify to these things for the sake of the Churches. I am the root and the offspring of David, and the bright morning star.<p/></i><p/>Jesus guarantees the truth of all that John has seen and heard. The point of this guarantee is this. The book begins by promising a revelation to be given by Jesus (<a href='B:730 1:1'>Rev 1:1</a>); this is the attestation of Jesus that, however the vision came, it came from him.<p/>He then goes on to give, as it were, his credentials. "I am the root and the offspring of David, he says. That is a reference to <a href='B:290 11:1'>Isa 11:1</a>: "There shall come forth a shoot from the stump of Jesse, and a branch shall grow out of his roots." Jesus is saying that in him is the fulfilment of this prophecy, that he is at one and the same time the eternal source of being from which David came and his promised descendant.<p/>"I am the bright morning star, he says. To call a man a morning star was to class him very high among the heroes. The rabbis, for instance, called Mordecai by that name. More than that, this would recall the great Messianic prophecy: "A star shall come forth out of Jacob" (<a href='B:40 24:17'>Num 24:17</a>).<p/>This would awaken other realms of thought. The morning star is the herald of the day which chases away the darkness of the night; before Jesus the night of sin and death flees away.<p/>Surely this would awaken still another memory. In the days of his flesh Jesus had said: "I am the light of the world; he who follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life" (<a href='B:500 8:12'>Joh 8:12</a>). When the Risen Christ said that he was the morning star, he claimed again to be the light of the world and the vanquisher of all the world's darkness.<p/><b>THE GREAT INVITATION</b> (<a href='B:730 22:17'>Rev 22:17</a>)<p/><i> 22:17 The Spirit and the Bride say: Come! And let him that hears say: Come! Let him who is thirsty come and let him who wishes take the water of life without price.<p/></i><p/>There are two different interpretations of this passage.<p/>H. B. Swete takes the first two parts as an appeal to Christ to fulfil his promise and come quickly back to this world; and he takes the third part as an invitation to the thirsty soul to come to Christ. But it seems very improbable that there should be such a difference between the first two parts and the third. It is much more likely that the whole passage is a great invitation to all men to come to Christ. It falls into three sections.<p/>(i) There is the invitation of the Spirit and the Bride. The Bride, we know, is the Church. But what are we to understand by the Spirit? It may be the Spirit who is operative in all the prophets and who is always calling men back to God. Much more likely, John uses the Spirit for the voice of Jesus himself. The regular ending of the letters to the seven Churches is an invitation to hear what the Spirit is saying (<a href='B:730 2:7'>Rev 2:7</a>; <a href='B:730 2:11'>Rev 2:11</a>; <a href='B:730 2:17'>Rev 2:17</a>; <a href='B:730 2:29'>Rev 2:29</a>; <a href='B:730 3:6'>Rev 3:6</a>; <a href='B:730 3:13'>Rev 3:13</a>; <a href='B:730 3:22'>Rev 3:22</a>). Now, the speaker to the seven Churches is the Risen Christ; and, therefore, quite clearly there the Spirit and the Christ are identified. "The Spirit and the Bride say: Come!" probably means that Christ and his Church join in the invitation to accept all that he has to offer.<p/>(ii) "Let him that hears say: Come!" symbolizes the great truth that every Christian is to be a missionary. He who has been found by Christ must find others for Christ.<p/>(iii) The third section is an invitation to all thirsty souls to come to Jesus Christ that their need may be satisfied. It must remind us of God's great invitation, "Ho, every one who thirsts come to the waters, and he who has no money; come, buy and eat! come, buy wine and milk without money and without price" (<a href='B:290 55:1'>Isa 55:1</a>); and also of the great word of Jesus himself. "He who comes to me shall not hunger; and he who believes in me shall never thirst" (<a href='B:500 6:35'>Joh 6:35</a>). In Christ alone the longing of the soul can be satisfied.<p/>O Christ, in thee my soul hath found,<p/>And found in thee alone,<p/>The peace, the joy, I sought so long,<p/>The bliss till now unknown.<p/>Now none but Christ can satisfy,<p/>None other Name for me!<p/>There's love, and life, and lasting joy,<p/>Lord Jesus found in thee.<p/><b>THE WARNING</b> (<a href='B:730 22:18-19'>Rev 22:18-19</a>)<p/><i> 22:18,19 I give this warning to everyone who hears the words of the prophecy of this book. If anyone adds to them, God will add to him the plagues which are written in this book. And, if anyone takes away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God will take away his share in the tree of life and in the holy city, which are described in this book.<p/></i><p/>There are certain things to note about this solemn warning.<p/>(i) It is not to be interpreted with absolute literalness. It does not refer to every individual word of the Revelation. It so happens that the text is, in fact, in bad condition and we do not know for certain what the actual wording is. What it does warn against is distorting the teaching which the book contains. It is very much what Paul meant, when he said: "If any one is preaching to you a gospel contrary to that which you received, let him be accursed" (<a href='B:550 1:8-9'>Gal 1:8-9</a>). It is the truth, and not the wording of the truth, which must not be changed.<p/>(ii) This is far from being an unique ending to an ancient book. It is, in fact, the kind of ending that ancient writers commonly added to their books. We find similar warnings in the Bible in other places. "You shall not add to the word which I command you, nor take from it; that you may keep the commandments of the Lord your God, which I command you" (<a href='B:50 4:2'>Deu 4:2</a>). "Every word of God proves true.... Do not add to his words, lest he rebuke you, and you be found a liar" (<a href='B:240 30:5-6'>Pro 30:5-6</a>). In the Book of Enoch the writer demands that no one should "change or minish ought of my words" (Enoch 104:10).<p/>The Letter of Aristeas tells how the Septuagint, the Greek version of the Hebrew Bible, was made by seventy Jewish scholars at the request of the King of Egypt. When the task was done "they bade them pronounce a curse in accordance with their custom upon any who should make any alteration either by adding anything or changing in any way whatever any of the words which had been written or making an omission" (Letter of Aristeas 310, 31 1). In the preface to his book On Origins, Rufinus adjures in the sight of God, the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, anyone who reads or copies his book, not to add, subtract, insert, or alter anything. Eusebius (The Ecclesiastical History 5:20:2) quotes the way in which Irenaeus, the great second century Christian scholar, ends one of his books: "I adjure thee who mayest copy this book, by our Lord Jesus Christ, and by his glorious advent, when he comes to judge the quick and the dead, to compare what thou shalt write, and correct it carefully by this manuscript, and also to write this adjuration, and to place it on your copy."<p/>In the ancient days, since all books were hand-copied by scribes and everyone knew how easy it was for a scribe to make mistakes in the copying, it was a regular custom to insert at the end of a book a solemn warning against change.<p/>It is in the light of that regular custom that we must read John's words. To use this passage as an argument for verbal inspiration is an error.<p/>One final word must be said about this passage. R. H. Charles points out that this warning may not be part of the original book at all. We must be impressed by the number of times John insists that Christ will come at any moment (<a href='B:730 22:7'>Rev 22:7</a>; <a href='B:730 22:10'>Rev 22:10</a>; <a href='B:730 22:12'>Rev 22:12</a>; <a href='B:730 22:20'>Rev 22:20</a>). "Behold, I am coming soon" is the very refrain of the chapter. And yet this warning would seem to imply the expectation of a long time of reading and copying the book, a time which John himself clearly did not expect. It is, therefore, by no means impossible that these words are the words not of John but of a later scribe, anxious that none should alter the book in the days to come.<p/><b>LAST WORDS</b> (<a href='B:730 22:20-21'>Rev 22:20-21</a>)<p/><i> 22:20,21 He who testifies to the truth of these things says: "Yes, I am coming soon." So let it be! Come, Lord Jesus!<p/>The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ be with you all.<p/></i><p/>There is both pathos and glory in the way in which the Revelation ends. Amidst the terrible persecution of his day, the one thing which John longed for was the speedy return of Christ. That hope was never realized in the way in which he expected, but we can never doubt that Christ nevertheless abundantly kept his promise that he would be with his own even to the end of the world (<a href='B:470 28:20'>Mat 28:20</a>).<p/>Then comes the glory. Come what may, John was sure of the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and equally sure that it was sufficient for all things.<p/>It is surely symbolic, and it is surely fitting, that the last word of the Bible should be GRACE.


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MATTHEW<p/>INTRODUCTION TO THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO SAINT MATTHEW<p/><b>The Synoptic Gospels</b><p/> Matthew, Mark and Luke are usually known as the Synoptic Gospels. Synoptic comes from two Greek words which mean to see together and literally means able to be seen together. The reason for that name is this. These three gospels each give an account of the same events in Jesus' life. There are in each of them additions and omissions; but broadly speaking their material is the same and their arrangement is the same. It is therefore possible to set them down in parallel columns, and so to compare the one with the other.<p/>When that is done, it is quite clear that there is the closest possible relationship between them. If we, for instance, compare the story of the feeding of the five thousand (<a href='B:470 14:12-21'>Mat 14:12-21</a>; <a href='B:480 6:30-44'>Mar 6:30-44</a>; <a href='B:490 9:10-17'>Luk 9:10-17</a>) we find exactly the same story told in almost exactly the same words.<p/>Another instance is the story of the healing of the man who was sick with the palsy (<a href='B:470 9:1-8'>Mat 9:1-8</a>; <a href='B:480 2:1-12'>Mar 2:1-12</a>; <a href='B:490 5:17-26'>Luk 5:17-26</a>). These three accounts are so similar that even a little parenthesis--"he then said to the paralytic"--occurs in all three as a parenthesis in exactly the same place. The correspondence between the three gospels is so close that we are bound to come to the conclusion either that all three are drawing their material from a common source, or that two of them must be based on the third.<p/><b>The Earliest Gospel</b><p/> When we examine the matter more closely we see that there is every reason for believing that Mark must have been the first of the gospels to be written, and that the other two, Matthew and Luke, are using Mark as a basis.<p/>Mark can be divided into 105 sections. Of these sections 93 occur in Matthew and 81 in Luke. Of Mark's 105 sections there are only 4 which do not occur either in Matthew or in Luke.<p/>Mark has 661 verses: Matthew has 1,068 verses: Luke has 1,149 verses. Matthew reproduces no fewer than 606 of Mark's verses; and Luke reproduces 320: Of the 55 verses of Mark which Matthew does not reproduce Luke reproduces 31; so there are only 24 verses in the whole of Mark which are not reproduced somewhere in Matthew or Luke.<p/>It is not only the substance of the verses which is reproduced; the very words are reproduced. Matthew uses 51 per cent of Mark's words; and Luke uses 53 per cent.<p/>Both Matthew and Luke as a general rule follow Mark's order of events. Occasionally either Matthew or Luke differs from Mark; but they never both differ against him; always at least one of them follows Mark's order.<p/><b>Improvements On Mark</b><p/> Since Matthew and Luke are both much longer than Mark, it might just possibly be suggested that Mark is a summary of Matthew and Luke; but there is one other set of facts which show that Mark is earlier. It is the custom of Matthew and Luke to improve and to polish Mark, if we may put it so. Let us take some instances.<p/>Sometimes Mark seems to limit the power of Jesus; at least an ill-disposed critic might try to prove that he was doing so. Here are three accounts of the same incident:<p/><a href='B:480 1:34'>Mar 1:34</a>: And he healed many who were sick with various<p/>diseases, and cast out many demons;<p/><a href='B:470 8:16'>Mat 8:16</a>: And he cast out the spirits with a word, and<p/>healed all who were sick;<p/><a href='B:490 4:40'>Luk 4:40</a>: And he laid his hands on every one of them, and<p/>healed them.<p/>Let us take other three similar examples:<p/><a href='B:480 3:10'>Mar 3:10</a>: For he had healed many;<p/><a href='B:470 12:15'>Mat 12:15</a>: And he healed them all;<p/><a href='B:490 6:19'>Luk 6:19</a>: and healed them all.<p/>Matthew and Luke both change Mark's many into all so that there may be no suggestion of any limitation of the power of Jesus Christ.<p/>There is a very similar change in the account of the events of Jesus' visit to Nazareth. Let us compare the account of Mark and of Matthew.<p/><a href='B:480 6:5-6'>Mar 6:5-6</a>: And he could do no mighty work there... and<p/>he marvelled because of their unbelief;<p/><a href='B:470 13:58'>Mat 13:58</a>: And he did not do many mighty works there,<p/>because of their unbelief.<p/>Matthew shrinks from saying that Jesus could not do any mighty works; and changes the form of the expression accordingly.<p/>Sometimes Matthew and Luke leave out little touches in Mark in case they could be taken to belittle Jesus. Matthew and Luke omit three statements in Mark.<p/><a href='B:480 3:5'>Mar 3:5</a>: "He looked around at them with anger, grieved<p/>at their hardness of heart."<p/><a href='B:480 3:21'>Mar 3:21</a>: And when his friends heard it, they went out to<p/>seize him: for they said, He is beside himself;<p/><a href='B:480 10:14'>Mar 10:14</a>: He was indignant.<p/>Matthew and Luke hesitate to attribute human emotions of anger and grief to Jesus, and shudder to think that anyone should even have suggested that Jesus was mad.<p/>Sometimes Matthew and Luke slightly alter things in Mark to get rid of statements which might seem to show the apostles in a bad light. We take but one instance, from the occasion on which James and John sought to ensure themselves of the highest places in the coming Kingdom. Let us compare the introduction to that story in Mark and in Matthew.<p/><a href='B:480 10:35'>Mar 10:35</a>: James and John, the sons of Zebedee, came<p/>forward to him, and said to him...<p/><a href='B:470 20:20'>Mat 20:20</a>: Then the mother of the sons of Zebedee came<p/>up to him, with her sons, and kneeling before him,<p/>she asked him for something.<p/>Matthew hesitates to ascribe motives of ambition directly to the two apostles, and so he ascribes them to their mother.<p/>All this makes it clear that Mark is the earliest of the gospels. Mark gives a simple, vivid, direct narrative; but Matthew and Luke have already begun to be affected by doctrinal and theological considerations which make them much more careful of what they say.<p/><b>The Teaching Of Jesus</b><p/> We have seen that Matthew has 1,068 verses; and that Luke has 1,149 verses; and that between them they reproduce 582 of Mark's verses. That means that in Matthew and Luke there is much more material than Mark supplies. When we examine that material we find that more than 200 verses of it are almost identical. For instance such passages as <a href='B:490 6:41-42'>Luk 6:41-42</a> and <a href='B:470 7:1'>Mat 7:1</a>,; <a href='B:490 10:21-22'>Luk 10:21-22</a> and <a href='B:470 11:25-27'>Mat 11:25-27</a>; <a href='B:490 3:7-9'>Luk 3:7-9</a> and <a href='B:470 3:7-10'>Mat 3:7-10</a> are almost exactly the same.<p/>But here we notice a difference. The material which Matthew and Luke drew from Mark was almost entirely material dealing with the events of Jesus' life; but these 200 additional verses common to Matthew and Luke tell us, not what Jesus did, but what Jesus said. Clearly in these verses Matthew and Luke are drawing from a common source-book of the sayings of Jesus.<p/>That book does not now exist; but to it scholars have given the letter Q which stands for Quelle, which is the German word for "source." In its day it must have been an extraordinarily important book, for it was the first handbook of the teaching of Jesus.<p/><b>Matthew's Place In The Gospel Tradition</b><p/> It is here that we come to Matthew the apostle. Scholars are agreed that the first gospel as it stands does not come directly from the hand of Matthew. One who had himself been an eye-witness of the life of Christ would not have needed to use Mark as a source-book for the life of Jesus in the way Matthew does. But one of the earliest Church historians, a man called Papias, gives us this intensely important piece of information:<p/>"Matthew collected the sayings of Jesus in the Hebrew tongue."<p/>So, then, we can believe that it was none other than Matthew who wrote that book which was the source from which all men must draw, if they wished to know what Jesus taught. And it was because so much of that source-book is incorporated in the first gospel that Matthew's name was attached to it. We must be for ever grateful to Matthew, when we remember that it is to him that we owe the Sermon on the Mount and nearly all we know about the teaching of Jesus. Broadly speaking, to Mark we owe our knowledge of the events of Jesus' life; to Matthew we owe our knowledge of the substance of Jesus' teaching.<p/><b>Matthew The Taxgatherer</b><p/> About Matthew himself we know very little. We read of his call in <a href='B:470 9:9'>Mat 9:9</a>. We know that he was a taxgatherer and that he must therefore have been a bitterly hated man, for the Jews hated the members of their own race who had entered the civil service of their conquerors. Matthew would be regarded as nothing better than a quisling.<p/>But there was one gift which Matthew would possess. Most of the disciples were fishermen. They would have little skill and little practice in putting words together on paper; but Matthew would be an expert in that. When Jesus called Matthew, as he sat at the receipt of custom, Matthew rose up and followed him and left everything behind him except one thing--his pen. And Matthew nobly used his literary skill to become the first man ever to compile an account of the teaching of Jesus.<p/><b>The Gospel Of The Jews</b><p/> Let us now look at the chief characteristics of Matthew's gospel so that we may watch for them as we read it.<p/>First and foremost, Matthew is the gospel which was written for the Jews. It was written by a Jew in order to convince Jews.<p/>One of the great objects of Matthew is to demonstrate that all the prophecies of the Old Testament are fulfilled in Jesus, and that, therefore, he must be the Messiah. It has one phrase which runs through it like an ever-recurring theme--"This was to fulfil what the Lord had spoken by the prophet." That phrase occurs in the gospel as often as 16 times. Jesus' birth and Jesus' name are the fulfillment of prophecy (<a href='B:470 1:21-23'>Mat 1:21-23</a>); so are the flight to Egypt (<a href='B:470 2:14-15'>Mat 2:14-15</a>); the slaughter of the children (<a href='B:470 2:16-18'>Mat 2:16-18</a>); Joseph's settlement in Nazareth and Jesus' upbringing there (<a href='B:470 2:23'>Mat 2:23</a>); Jesus' use of parables (<a href='B:470 13:34-35'>Mat 13:34-35</a>); the triumphal entry (<a href='B:470 21:3-5'>Mat 21:3-5</a>); the betrayal for thirty pieces of silver (<a href='B:470 27:9'>Mat 27:9</a>); the casting of lots for Jesus' garments as he hung on the Cross (<a href='B:470 27:35'>Mat 27:35</a>). It is Matthew's primary and deliberate purpose to show how the Old Testament prophecies received their fulfillment in Jesus; how every detail of Jesus' life was foreshadowed in the prophets; and thus to compel the Jews to admit that Jesus was the Messiah.<p/>The main interest of Matthew is in the Jews. Their conversion is especially near and dear to the heart of its writer. When the Syro-Phoenician woman seeks his help, Jesus' first answer is: "I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel" (<a href='B:470 15:24'>Mat 15:24</a>). When Jesus sends out the Twelve on the task of evangelization, his instruction is: "Go nowhere among the Gentiles, and enter no town of the Samaritans, but go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel" (<a href='B:470 10:5-6'>Mat 10:5-6</a>). Yet it is not to be thought that this gospel by any means excludes the Gentiles. Many are to come from the east and the west to sit down in the kingdom of God (<a href='B:470 8:11'>Mat 8:11</a>). The gospel is to be preached to the whole world (<a href='B:470 24:14'>Mat 24:14</a>). And it is Matthew which gives us the marching orders of the Church: "Go therefore and make disciples of all nations" (<a href='B:470 28:19'>Mat 28:19</a>). It is clear that Matthew's first interest is in the Jews, but that it foresees the day when an nations will be gathered in.<p/>The Jewishness of Matthew is also seen in its attitude to the Law. Jesus did not come to destroy, but to fulfil the Law. The least part of the Law will not pass away. Men must not be taught to break the Law. The righteousness of the Christian must exceed the righteousness of the Scribes and Pharisees (<a href='B:470 5:17-20'>Mat 5:17-20</a>). Matthew was written by one who knew and loved the Law, and who saw that even the Law has its place in the Christian economy.<p/>Once again there is an apparent paradox in the attitude of Matthew to the Scribes and Pharisees. They are given a very special authority: "The Scribes and the Pharisees sit on Moses' seat; so practice and observe whatever they tell you" (<a href='B:470 23:2'>Mat 23:2</a>). But at the same time there is no gospel which so sternly and consistently condemns them.<p/>Right at the beginning there is John the Baptist's savage denunciation of them as a brood of vipers (<a href='B:470 3:7-12'>Mat 3:7-12</a>). They complain that Jesus eats with tax collectors and sinners (<a href='B:470 9:11'>Mat 9:11</a>). They ascribe the power of Jesus, not to God, but to the prince of devils (<a href='B:470 12:24'>Mat 12:24</a>). They plot to destroy him (<a href='B:470 12:14'>Mat 12:14</a>). The disciples are warned against the leaven, the evil teaching, of the Scribes and Pharisees (<a href='B:470 16:12'>Mat 16:12</a>). They are like evil plants doomed to be rooted up (<a href='B:470 15:13'>Mat 15:13</a>). They are quite unable to read the signs of the times (<a href='B:470 16:3'>Mat 16:3</a>). They are the murderers of the prophets (<a href='B:470 21:41'>Mat 21:41</a>). There is no chapter of condemnation in the whole New Testament like <a href='B:470 23:1-39'>Mat 23:1-39</a>, which is condemnation not of what the Scribes and the Pharisees teach, but of what they are. He condemns them for falling so far short of their own teaching, and far below the ideal of what they ought to be.<p/>There are certain other special interests in Matthew. Matthew is especially interested in the Church. It is in fact the only one of the Synoptic Gospels which uses the word Church at all. Only Matthew introduces the passage about the Church after Peter's confession at Caesarea Philippi (<a href='B:470 16:13-23'>Mat 16:13-23</a>; compare <a href='B:480 8:27-33'>Mar 8:27-33</a>; <a href='B:490 9:18-22'>Luk 9:18-22</a>). Only Matthew says that disputes are to be settled by the Church (<a href='B:470 18:17'>Mat 18:17</a>). By the time Matthew came to be written the Church had become a great organization and institution; and indeed the dominant factor in the life of the Christian.<p/>Matthew has a specially strong apocalyptic interest. That is to say, Matthew has a specially strong interest in all that Jesus said about his own Second Coming, about the end of the world, and about the judgment. <a href='B:470 24:1-51'>Mat 24:1-51</a> gives us a fuller account of Jesus' apocalyptic discourse than any of the other gospels. Matthew alone has the parables of the talents (<a href='B:470 25:14-30'>Mat 25:14-30</a>); the wise and the foolish virgins (<a href='B:470 25:1-13'>Mat 25:1-13</a>); and the sheep and the goats (<a href='B:470 25:31-46'>Mat 25:31-46</a>). Matthew has a special interest in the last things and in judgment.<p/>But we have not yet come to the greatest of all the characteristics of Matthew. It is supremely the teaching gospel.<p/>We have already seen that the apostle Matthew was responsible for the first collection and the first handbook of the teaching of Jesus. Matthew was the great systematizer. It was his habit to gather together in one place all that he knew about the teaching of Jesus on any given subject. The result is that in Matthew we find five great blocks in which the teaching of Jesus is collected and systematized. All these sections have to do with the Kingdom of God. They are as follows:<p/>(a) The Sermon on the Mount, or The Law of the Kingdom (<a href='B:470 5:1-48'>Mat 5:1-48</a>; <a href='B:470 6:1-34'>Mat 6:1-34</a>; <a href='B:470 7:1-29'>Mat 7:1-29</a>).<p/>(b) The Duties of the Leaders of the Kingdom (<a href='B:470 10:1-42'>Mat 10:1-42</a>)<p/>(c) The Parables of the Kingdom (<a href='B:470 13:1-58'>Mat 13:1-58</a>).<p/>(d) Greatness and Forgiveness in the Kingdom (<a href='B:470 18:1-35'>Mat 18:1-35</a>).<p/>(e) The Coming of the King (<a href='B:470 24:1-51'>Mat 24:1-51</a>; <a href='B:470 25:1-46'>Mat 25:1-46</a>).<p/>Matthew does more than collect and systematize. It must be remembered that Matthew was writing in an age when printing had not been invented, when books were few and far between because they had to be hand-written. In an age like that, comparatively few people could possess a book; and, therefore, if they wished to know and to use the teaching and the story of Jesus, they had to carry them in their memories.<p/>Matthew therefore always arranges things in a way that is easy for the reader to memorize. He arranges things in threes and sevens. There are three messages to Joseph; three denials of Peter; three questions of Pilate; seven parables of the Kingdom in <a href='B:470 13:1-58'>Mat 13:1-58</a>; seven woes to the Scribes and Pharisees in <a href='B:470 23:1-39'>Mat 23:1-39</a>.<p/>The genealogy of Jesus with which the gospel begins is a good example of this. The genealogy is to prove that Jesus is the Son of David. In Hebrew there are no figures; when figures are necessary the letters of the alphabet stand for the figures. In Hebrew there are no written vowels. The Hebrew letters for David are D-W-D; if these letters be taken as figures and not as letters, they add up to 14; and the genealogy consists of three groups of names, and in each group there are 14 names. Matthew does everything possible to arrange the teaching of Jesus in such a way that people will be able to assimilate and to remember it.<p/>Every teacher owes a debt of gratitude to Matthew, for Matthew wrote what is above all the teacher's gospel.<p/>Matthew has one final characteristic. Matthew's dominating idea is that of Jesus as King. He writes to demonstrate the royalty of Jesus.<p/>Right at the beginning the genealogy is to prove that Jesus is the Son of David (<a href='B:470 1:1-17'>Mat 1:1-17</a>). The title, Son of David, is used oftener in Matthew than in any other gospel (<a href='B:470 15:22'>Mat 15:22</a>; <a href='B:470 21:9'>Mat 21:9</a>; <a href='B:470 21:15'>Mat 21:15</a>). The wise men come looking for him who is King of the Jews (<a href='B:470 2:2'>Mat 2:2</a>). The triumphal entry is a deliberately dramatized claim to be King (<a href='B:470 21:1-11'>Mat 21:1-11</a>). Before Pilate, Jesus deliberately accepts the name of King (<a href='B:470 27:11'>Mat 27:11</a>). Even on the Cross the title of King is affixed, even if it be in mockery, over his head (<a href='B:470 27:37'>Mat 27:37</a>). In the Sermon on the Mount, Matthew shows us Jesus quoting the Law and five times abrogating it with a regal: "But I say to you..." (<a href='B:470 5:21'>Mat 5:21</a>; <a href='B:470 5:27'>Mat 5:27</a>; <a href='B:470 5:34'>Mat 5:34</a>; <a href='B:470 5:38'>Mat 5:38</a>; <a href='B:470 5:43'>Mat 5:43</a>). The final claim of Jesus is: "All authority has been given to me" (<a href='B:470 28:18'>Mat 28:18</a>).<p/>Matthew's picture of Jesus is of the man born to be King. Jesus walks through his pages as if in the purple and gold of royalty. 


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MARK<p/>INTRODUCTION TO THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO SAINT MARK<p/><b>The Synoptic Gospels</b><p/> The first three gospels, Matthew, Mark and Luke, are always known as the synoptic gospels. The word synoptic comes from two Greek words which mean to see together; and these three are called the synoptic gospels because they can be set down in parallel columns and their common matter looked at together. It would be possible to argue that of them all Mark is the most important. It would indeed be possible to go further and to argue that it is the most important book in the world, because it is agreed by nearly everyone that it is the earliest of all the gospels and therefore the first life of Jesus that has come down to us. Mark may not have been the first man to write the life of Jesus. Doubtless there were earlier simple attempts to set down the story of Jesus' life; but Mark's gospel is certainly the earliest life of Jesus that has survived.<p/><b>The Pedigree Of The Gospels</b><p/> When we consider how the gospels came to be written, we must try to think ourselves back to a time when there was no such thing as a printed book in all the world. The gospels were written long before printing had been invented, compiled when every book had to be carefully and laboriously written out by hand. It is clear that so long as that was the case only a few copies of any book could exist.<p/>How do we know, or how can we deduce, that Mark was the first of all the gospels? When we read the synoptic gospels even in English we see that there are remarkable similarities between them. They contain the same incidents often told in the same words; and they contain accounts of the teaching of Jesus which are often almost identical. If we compare the story of the Feeding of the Five Thousand in the three gospels (<a href='B:480 6:30-44'>Mar 6:30-44</a>; <a href='B:470 14:12-21'>Mat 14:12-21</a>; <a href='B:490 9:10-17'>Luk 9:10-17</a>) we see that it is told in almost exactly the same words and in exactly the same way. A very clear instance of this is the story of the healing of the man who was sick of the palsy (<a href='B:480 2:1-12'>Mar 2:1-12</a>; <a href='B:470 9:1-8'>Mat 9:1-8</a>; <a href='B:490 5:17-26'>Luk 5:17-26</a>). The accounts are so similar that even a little parenthesis--"he said to the paralytic"--occurs in all three in exactly the same place. The correspondences are so close that we are forced to one of two conclusions. Either all three are taking their material from some common source, or two of the three are based on the third.<p/>When we study the matter closely we find that Mark can be divided into 105 sections. Of these 93 occur in Matthew and 81 in Luke. Only four are not included either in Matthew or in Luke. Even more compelling is this. Mark has 661 verses; Matthew has 1,068 verses; Luke has 1,149 verses. Of Mark's 661 verses, Matthew reproduces no fewer than 606: Sometimes he alters the wording slightly but he even reproduces 51 per cent. of Mark's actual words. Of Mark's 661 verses Luke reproduces 320, and he actually uses 53 per cent. of Mark's actual words. Of the 55 verses of Mark which Matthew does not reproduce 31 are found in Luke. So the result is that there are only 24 verses in Mark which do not occur somewhere in Matthew and Luke. This makes it look very like as if Matthew and Luke were using Mark as the basis of their gospels.<p/>What makes the matter still more certain is this. Both Matthew and Luke very largely follow Mark's order of events. Sometimes Matthew alters Mark's order and sometimes Luke does. But when there is a change in the order Matthew and Luke never agree together against Mark. Always one of them retains Mark's order of events.<p/>A close examination of the three gospels makes it clear that Matthew and Luke had Mark before them as they wrote; and they used his gospel as the basis into which they fitted the extra material which they wished to include.<p/>It is thrilling to remember that when we read Mark's gospel we are reading the first life of Jesus, on which all succeeding lives have necessarily been based.<p/><b>Mark, The Writer Of The Gospel</b><p/> Who then was this Mark who wrote the gospel? The New Testament tells us a good deal about him. He was the son of a well-to-do lady of Jerusalem whose name was Mary, and whose house was a rallying-point and meeting place of the early church (<a href='B:510 12:12'>Act 12:12</a>). From the very beginning Mark was brought up in the very centre of the Christian fellowship.<p/>Mark was also the nephew of Barnabas, and when Paul and Barnabas set out on their first missionary journey they took Mark with them to be their secretary and attendant (<a href='B:510 12:25'>Act 12:25</a>). This journey was a most unfortunate one for Mark. When they reached Perga, Paul proposed to strike inland up to the central plateau; and for some reason Mark left the expedition and went home (<a href='B:510 13:13'>Act 13:13</a>).<p/>He may have gone home because he was scared to face the dangers of what was notoriously one of the most difficult and dangerous roads in the world, a road hard to travel and haunted by bandits. He may have gone home because it was increasingly clear that the leadership of the expedition was being assumed by Paul and Mark may have felt with disapproval that his uncle was being pushed into the background. He may have gone home because he did not approve of the work which Paul was doing. Chrysostom--perhaps with a flash of imaginative insight--says that Mark went home because he wanted his mother!<p/>Paul and Barnabas completed their first missionary journey and then proposed to set out upon their second. Barnabas was anxious to take Mark with them again. But Paul refused to have anything to do with the man "who had withdrawn from them in Pamphylia." (<a href='B:510 15:37-40'>Act 15:37-40</a>.) So serious was the difference between them that Paul and Barnabas split company, and, so far as we know, never worked together again.<p/>For some years Mark vanishes from history. Tradition has it that he went down to Egypt and founded the Church of Alexandria there. Whether or not that is true we do not know, but we do know that when Mark re-emerges it is in the most surprising way. We learn to our surprise that when Paul writes the letter to the Colossians from prison in Rome Mark is there with him (<a href='B:580 4:10'>Col 4:10</a>). In another prison letter, to Philemon, Paul numbers Mark among his fellow-labourers (<a href='B:640 1:24'>Phm 1:24</a>). And, when Paul is waiting for death and very near the end, he writes to Timothy, his right-hand man, and says, "Take Mark and bring him with you; for he is a most useful servant to me." (<a href='B:620 4:11'>2Ti 4:11</a>.) It is a far cry from the time when Paul contemptuously dismissed Mark as a quitter. Whatever had happened Mark had redeemed himself. He was the one man Paul wanted at the end.<p/><b>Mark's Sources Of Information</b><p/> The value of any man's story will depend on the sources of his information. Where, then, did Mark get his information about the life and work of Jesus? We have seen that his home was from the beginning a Christian centre of Jerusalem. Many a time he must have heard people tell of their personal memories of Jesus. But it is most likely that he had a source of information without a superior.<p/>Towards the end of the second century there was a man called Papias who liked to obtain and transmit such information as he could glean about the early days of the Church. He tells us that Mark's gospel is nothing other than a record of the preaching material of Peter, the greatest of the apostles. Certainly Mark stood so close to Peter, and so near to his heart, that Peter could call him "Mark, my son." (<a href='B:670 5:13'>1Pe 5:13</a>.) Here is what Papias says:<p/>"Mark, who was Peter's interpreter, wrote down accurately, though<p/>not in order, all that he recollected of what Christ had said or<p/>done. For he was not a hearer of the Lord or a follower of his. He<p/>followed Peter, as I have said, at a later date, and Peter adapted<p/>his instruction to practical needs. without any attempt to give<p/>the Lord's words systematically. So that Mark was not wrong in<p/>writing down some things in this way from memory, for his one<p/>concern was neither to omit nor to falsify anything that he had<p/>heard."<p/>We may then take it that in his gospel we have what Mark remembered of the preaching material of Peter himself.<p/>So, then, we have two great reasons why Mark is a book of supreme importance. First, it is the earliest of all the gospels; if it was written just shortly after Peter died its date will be about A.D. 65: Second, it embodies the record of what Peter preached and taught about Jesus; we may put it this way--Mark is the nearest approach we will ever possess to an eyewitness account of the life of Jesus.<p/><b>The Lost Ending</b><p/> There is a very interesting thing about Mark's gospel. In its original form it stops at <a href='B:480 16:8'>Mar 16:8</a>. We know that for two reasons. First, the verses which follow (<a href='B:480 16:9-20'>Mar 16:9-20</a>) are not in any of the great early manuscripts; only later and inferior manuscripts contain them. Second, the style of the Greek is so different that they cannot have been written by the same person as wrote the rest of the gospel.<p/>But the gospel cannot have been meant to stop at <a href='B:480 16:8'>Mar 16:8</a>. What then happened? It may be that Mark died, perhaps even suffered martyrdom, before he could complete his gospel. More likely, it may be that at one time only one copy of the gospel remained, and that a copy in which the last part of the roll on which it was written had got torn off. There was a time when the church did not much use Mark, preferring Matthew and Luke. It may well be that Mark's gospel was so neglected that all copies except for a mutilated one were lost. If that is so we were within an ace of losing the gospel which in many ways is the most important of all.<p/><b>The Characteristics Of Mark's Gospel</b><p/> Let us look at the characteristics of Mark's gospel so that we may watch for them as we read and study it.<p/>(i) It is the nearest thing we will ever get to a report of Jesus' life. Mark's aim was to give a picture of Jesus as he was. Westcott called it "a transcript from life." A. B. Bruce said that it was written "from the viewpoint of loving, vivid recollection," and that its great characteristic was realism.<p/>If ever we are to get anything approaching a biography of Jesus, it must be based on Mark, for it is his delight to tell the facts of Jesus' life in the simplest and most dramatic way.<p/>(ii) Mark never forgot the divine side of Jesus. He begins his gospel with the declaration of faith, "The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God." He leaves us in no doubt what he believed Jesus to be. Again and again he speaks of the impact Jesus made on the mind and heart of those who heard him. The awe and astonishment which he evoked are always before Mark's mind. "They were astonished at his teaching." (<a href='B:480 1:22'>Mar 1:22</a>.) "They were all amazed." (<a href='B:480 1:27'>Mar 1:27</a>.) Such phrases occur again and again. Not only was this astonishment in the minds of the crowds who listened to Jesus; it was still more in the minds of the inner circle of the disciples. "And they were filled with awe, and said to one another, 'Who then is this, that even wind and sea obey him?'" (<a href='B:480 4:41'>Mar 4:41</a>.) "And they were utterly astounded." (<a href='B:480 6:51'>Mar 6:51</a>.) "The disciples were amazed at his words." (<a href='B:480 10:24'>Mar 10:24</a>; <a href='B:480 10:26'>Mar 10:26</a>.)<p/>To Mark, Jesus was not simply a man among men; he was God among men, ever moving them to a wondering amazement with his words and deeds.<p/>(iii) At the same time, no gospel gives such a human picture of Jesus. Sometimes its picture is so human that the later writers alter it a little because they are almost afraid to say what Mark said. To Mark Jesus is simply "the carpenter." (<a href='B:480 6:3'>Mar 6:3</a>.) Later Matthew alters that to "the carpenter's son" (<a href='B:470 13:55'>Mat 13:55</a>), as if to call Jesus a village tradesman is too daring. When Mark is telling of the temptations of Jesus, he writes, "The Spirit drove him into the wilderness." (<a href='B:480 1:12'>Mar 1:12</a>.) Matthew and Luke do not like this word drove used of Jesus, so they soften it down and say, "Jesus was led by the Spirit into the wilderness." (<a href='B:470 4:1'>Mat 4:1</a>; <a href='B:490 4:1'>Luk 4:1</a>.) No one tens us so much about the emotions of Jesus as Mark does. Jesus sighed deeply in his spirit (<a href='B:480 7:34'>Mar 7:34</a>; <a href='B:480 8:12'>Mar 8:12</a>). He was moved with compassion (<a href='B:480 6:34'>Mar 6:34</a>). He marvelled at their unbelief (<a href='B:480 6:6'>Mar 6:6</a>). He was moved with righteous anger (<a href='B:480 3:5'>Mar 3:5</a>; <a href='B:480 8:33'>Mar 8:33</a>; <a href='B:480 10:14'>Mar 10:14</a>). Only Mark tells us that when Jesus looked at the rich young ruler he loved him (<a href='B:480 10:21'>Mar 10:21</a>). Jesus could feel the pangs of hunger (<a href='B:480 11:12'>Mar 11:12</a>). He could be tired and want to rest (<a href='B:480 6:31'>Mar 6:31</a>).<p/>It is in Mark's gospel, above all, that we get a picture of a Jesus of like passions with us. The sheer humanity of Jesus in Mark's picture brings him very near to us.<p/>(iv) One of the great characteristics of Mark is that over and over again he inserts the little vivid details into the narrative which are the hall-mark of an eyewitness. Both Matthew and Mark tell of Jesus taking the little child and setting him in the midst. Matthew (<a href='B:470 18:2'>Mat 18:2</a>) says, "And calling to him a child, he put him in the midst of them." Mark adds something which lights up the whole picture (<a href='B:480 9:36'>Mar 9:36</a>). "And he took a child and put him in the midst of them; and taking him in his arms, he said to them..." In the lovely picture of Jesus and the children, when Jesus rebuked the disciples for keeping the children from him, only Mark finishes, "and he took them in his arms and blessed them, laying his hands upon them." (<a href='B:480 10:13-16'>Mar 10:13-16</a>; compare <a href='B:470 19:13-15'>Mat 19:13-15</a>; <a href='B:490 18:15-17'>Luk 18:15-17</a>.) All the tenderness of Jesus is in these little vivid additions. When Mark is telling of the Feeding of the Five Thousand he alone tells how they sat down in hundreds and in fifties, looking like vegetable beds in a garden (<a href='B:480 6:40'>Mar 6:40</a>) and immediately the whole scene rises before us. When Jesus and his disciples were on the last journey to Jerusalem, only Mark tells us, "and Jesus went before them." (<a href='B:480 10:32'>Mar 10:32</a>; compare <a href='B:470 20:17'>Mat 20:17</a>; <a href='B:490 18:31'>Luk 18:31</a>); and in that one vivid little phrase all the loneliness of Jesus stands out. When Mark is telling the story of the stilling of the storm he has one little sentence that none of the other gospel-writers have. "And he was in the hinder part of the ship asleep on a pillow" (<a href='B:480 4:38'>Mar 4:38</a>). And that one touch makes the picture vivid before our eyes.<p/>There can be little doubt that all these details are due to the fact that Peter was an eyewitness and was seeing these things again with the eye of memory.<p/>(v) Mark's realism and his simplicity come out in his Greek style.<p/>(a) His style is not carefully wrought and polished. He tells the story as a child might tell it. He adds statement to statement connecting them simply with the word "and." In the third chapter of the gospel, in the Greek, there are 34 clauses or sentences one after another introduced by "and" after one principal verb. It is the way in which an eager child would tell the story.<p/>(b) He is very fond of the words "and straightway, "and immediately." They occur in the gospel almost 30 times. It is sometimes said of a story that "it marches." But Mark's story does not so much march; he rushes on in a kind of breathless attempt to make the story as vivid to others as it is to himself.<p/>(c) He is very fond of the historic present. That is to say, in the Greek he talks of events in the present tense instead of in the past. "And when Jesus heard it, he says to them, 'Those who are strong do not need a doctor, but those who are ill'." (<a href='B:480 2:17'>Mar 2:17</a>.) "And when they come near to Jerusalem, to Bethphage and to Bethany, to the Mount of Olives, he sends two of his disciples, and says to them, 'Go into the village opposite you...'." (<a href='B:480 11:1-2'>Mar 11:1-2</a>.) "And immediately, while he was still speaking, Judas, one of The Twelve, comes." (<a href='B:480 14:43'>Mar 14:43</a>.)<p/>Generally speaking we do not keep these historic presents in translation, because in English they do not sound well; but they show how vivid and real the thing was to Mark's mind, as if it was happening before his very eyes.<p/>(d) He quite often gives us the very Aramaic words which Jesus used. To Jairus' daughter, Jesus said, "Talitha (<a href='S:G5008'>G5008</a>) cumi (<a href='S:G2891'>G2891</a>)." (<a href='B:480 5:41'>Mar 5:41</a>.) To the deaf man with the impediment in his speech he said, "Ephphatha (<a href='S:G2188'>G2188</a>)." (<a href='B:480 7:34'>Mar 7:34</a>.) The dedicated gift is "Corban (<a href='S:G2878'>G2878</a>)." (<a href='B:480 7:11'>Mar 7:11</a>.) In the Garden he says, "Abba (<a href='S:G5'>G5</a>), Father." (<a href='B:480 14:36'>Mar 14:36</a>.) On the Cross he cries, "Eloi (<a href='S:G1682'>G1682</a>) Eloi (<a href='S:G1682'>G1682</a>) lama (<a href='S:G2982'>G2982</a>) sabachthani (<a href='S:G4518'>G4518</a>) ?" (<a href='B:480 15:34'>Mar 15:34</a>.)<p/>There were times when Peter could hear again the very sound of Jesus' voice and could not help giving the thing to Mark in the very words that Jesus spoke.<p/><b>The Essential Gospel</b><p/> It would not be unfair to call Mark the essential gospel. We will do well to study with loving care the earliest gospel we possess, the gospel where we hear again the preaching of Peter himself. 


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LUKE<p/>INTRODUCTION TO THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO SAINT LUKE<p/><b>A Lovely Book And Its Author</b><p/> The gospel according to St. Luke has been called the loveliest book in the world. When once an American asked him if he could recommend a good life of Christ, Denney answered, "Have you tried the one that Luke wrote?" There is a legend that Luke was a skilled painter; there is even a painting of Mary in a Spanish cathedral to this day which purports to be by him. Certainly he had an eye for vivid things. It would not be far wrong to say that the third gospel is the best life of Christ ever written. Tradition has always believed that Luke was the author and we need have no qualms in accepting that tradition. In the ancient world it was the regular thing to attach books to famous names; no one thought it wrong. But Luke was never one of the famous figures of the early Church. If he had not written the gospel no one would have attached it to his name.<p/>Luke was a gentile; and he has the unique distinction of being the only New Testament writer who was not a Jew. He was a doctor by profession (<a href='B:580 4:14'>Col 4:14</a>) and maybe that very fact gave him the wide sympathy he possessed. It has been said that a minister sees men at their best; a lawyer sees men at their worst; and a doctor sees men as they are. Luke saw men and loved them all.<p/>The book was written to a man called Theophilus. He is called most excellent Theophilus and the title given him is the normal title for a high official in the Roman government. No doubt Luke wrote it to tell an earnest inquirer more about Jesus; and he succeeded in giving Theophilus a picture which must have thrilled his heart closer to the Jesus of whom he had heard.<p/><b>The Symbols Of The Gospels</b><p/> Every one of the four gospels was written from a certain point of view. Very often on stained glass windows the writers of the gospels are pictured; and usually to each there is attached a symbol. The symbols vary but one of the commonest allocations is this.<p/>The emblem of Mark is a man. Mark is the simplest and most straightforward of the gospels. It has been well said that its characteristic is realism. It is the nearest to being a report of Jesus' life.<p/>The emblem of Matthew is a lion. Matthew was a Jew writing for Jews and he saw in Jesus the Messiah, the lion of the tribe of Judah, the one whom all the prophets had predicted.<p/>The emblem of John is the eagle. The eagle can fly higher than any other bird. It is said that of all creatures only the eagle can look straight into the sun. John is the theological gospel; its flights of thought are higher than those of any of the others. It is the gospel where the philosopher can find themes to think about for a lifetime and to solve only in eternity.<p/>The symbol of Luke is the calf The calf is the animal for sacrifice; and Luke saw in Jesus the sacrifice for all the world. In Luke above all, the barriers are broken down and Jesus is for Jew and gentile, saint and sinner alike. He is the saviour of the world. Keeping that in mind, let us now set down the characteristics of this gospel.<p/><b>An Historian's Care</b><p/> First and foremost, Luke's gospel is an exceedingly careful bit of work. His Greek is notably good. The first four verses are well-nigh the best Greek in the New Testament. In them he claims that his work is the product of the most careful research. His opportunities were ample and his sources must have been good. As the trusted companion of Paul he must have known all the great figures of the church, and we may be sure that he had them tell their stories to him. For two years he was Paul's companion in imprisonment in Caesarea. In those long days he had every opportunity for study and research and he must have used them well.<p/>An example of Luke's care is the way in which he dates the emergence of John the Baptist. He does so by no fewer than six contemporary datings. "In the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar (1), Pontius Pilate being governor of Judaea (2), Herod being tetrarch of Galilee (3), and his brother Philip being tetrarch of the region of Ituraea and Trachonitis (4), and Lysanias tetrarch of Abilene (5) in the high priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas (6), the word of God came to John" (<a href='B:490 3:1-2'>Luk 3:1-2</a>). Here is a man who is writing with care and who will be as accurate as it is possible for him to be.<p/><b>The Gospel For The Gentiles</b><p/> It is clear that Luke wrote mainly for gentiles. Theophilus was a gentile, as was Luke himself, and there is nothing in the gospel that a gentile could not grasp and understand. (a) As we have seen, Luke begins his dating from the reigning Roman emperor and the current Roman governor. The Roman date comes first. (b) Unlike Matthew, he is not greatly interested in the life of Jesus as the fulfilment of Jewish prophecy. (c) He very seldom quotes the Old Testament at all. (d) He has a habit of giving Hebrew words in their Greek equivalent so that a Greek would understand. Simon the Cananaean becomes Simon the Zealot. (compare <a href='B:490 6:15'>Luk 6:15</a> and <a href='B:470 10:4'>Mat 10:4</a>). Calvary is called not by its Hebrew name, Golgotha (compare <a href='S:H1538'>H1538</a> and <a href='S:H1556'>H1556</a>), but by its Greek name, Kranion (<a href='S:G2898'>G2898</a>). Both mean the place of a skull. He never uses the Jewish term Rabbi (<a href='S:H7227'>H7227</a>) of Jesus but always a Greek word meaning Master. When he is tracing the descent of Jesus, he traces it not to Abraham, the founder of the Jewish race, as Matthew does, but to Adam, the founder of the human race. (compare <a href='B:470 1:2'>Mat 1:2</a> and <a href='B:490 3:38'>Luk 3:38</a>).<p/>Because of this Luke is the easiest of all the gospels to read. He was writing, not for Jews, but for people very like ourselves.<p/><b>The Gospel Of Prayer</b><p/> Luke's gospel is specially the gospel of prayer. At all the great moments of his life, Luke shows us Jesus at prayer. He prayed at his baptism (<a href='B:490 3:21'>Luk 3:21</a>); before his first collision with the Pharisees (<a href='B:490 5:16'>Luk 5:16</a>); before he chose the Twelve (<a href='B:490 6:12'>Luk 6:12</a>); before he questioned his disciples as to who they thought he was; before his first prediction of his own death (<a href='B:490 9:18'>Luk 9:18</a>); at the Transfiguration (<a href='B:490 9:29'>Luk 9:29</a>); and upon the Cross (<a href='B:490 23:46'>Luk 23:46</a>). Only Luke tells us that Jesus prayed for Peter in his hour of testing (<a href='B:490 22:32'>Luk 22:32</a>). Only he tells us the prayer parables of the Friend at Midnight (<a href='B:490 11:5-13'>Luk 11:5-13</a>) and the Unjust Judge (<a href='B:490 18:1-8'>Luk 18:1-8</a>). To Luke the unclosed door of prayer was one of the most precious in all the world.<p/><b>The Gospel Of Women</b><p/> In Palestine the place of women was low. In the Jewish morning prayer a man thanks God that he has not made him "a gentile, a slave or a woman." But Luke gives a very special place to women. The birth narrative is told from Mary's point of view. It is in Luke that we read of Elizabeth, of Anna, of the widow at Nain, of the woman who anointed Jesus' feet in the house of Simon the Pharisee. It is Luke who makes vivid the pictures of Martha and Mary and of Mary Magdalene. It is very likely that Luke was a native of Macedonia where women held a more emancipated position than anywhere else; and that may have something to do with it.<p/><b>The Gospel Of Praise</b><p/> In Luke the phrase "praising God" occurs oftener than in all the rest of the New Testament put together. This praise reaches its peak in the three great hymns that the church has sung throughout all her generations--the Magnificat (<a href='B:490 1:46-55'>Luk 1:46-55</a>); the Benediclus (<a href='B:490 1:68-79'>Luk 1:68-79</a>); and the Nunc Dimittis (<a href='B:490 2:29-32'>Luk 2:29-32</a>). There is a radiance in Luke's gospel which is a lovely thing, as if the sheen of heaven had touched the things of earth.<p/><b>The Universal Gospel</b><p/> But the outstanding characteristic of Luke is that it is the universal gospel. All the barriers are down; Jesus Christ is for all men without distinction.<p/>(a) The kingdom of heaven is not shut to the Samaritans (<a href='B:490 9:51-56'>Luk 9:51-56</a>). Luke alone tells the parable of the Good Samaritan (<a href='B:490 10:30-37'>Luk 10:30-37</a>). The one grateful leper is a Samaritan (<a href='B:490 17:11-19'>Luk 17:11-19</a>). John can record a saying that the Jews have no dealings with the Samaritans (<a href='B:500 4:9'>Joh 4:9</a>). But Luke refuses to shut the door on any man.<p/>(b) Luke shows Jesus speaking with approval of gentiles whom the orthodox Jew would have considered unclean. He shows us Jesus citing the widow of Zarephath and Naaman the Syrian as shining examples (<a href='B:490 4:25-27'>Luk 4:25-27</a>). The Roman centurion is praised for the greatness of his faith (<a href='B:490 7:9'>Luk 7:9</a>). Luke tells us of that great word of Jesus, "Men will come from east and west, and from north and south, and sit at the table in the kingdom of God" (<a href='B:490 13:29'>Luk 13:29</a>).<p/>(c) Luke is supremely interested in the poor. When Mary brings the offering for her purification it is the offering of the poor (<a href='B:490 2:24'>Luk 2:24</a>). When Jesus is, as it were, setting out his credentials to the emissaries of John, the climax is, "The poor have good news preached to them" (<a href='B:490 7:22'>Luk 7:22</a>). He alone tells the parable of the Rich Man and the Poor Man (<a href='B:490 16:19-31'>Luk 16:19-31</a>). In Luke's account of the Beatitudes the saying of Jesus runs, not, as in Matthew (<a href='B:470 5:3'>Mat 5:3</a>), "Blessed are the poor in spirit," but simply, "Blessed are you poor" (<a href='B:490 6:20'>Luk 6:20</a>). Luke's gospel has been called "the gospel of the underdog." His heart runs out to everyone for whom life is an unequal struggle.<p/>(d) Above all Luke shows Jesus as the friend of outcasts and sinners. He alone tells of the woman who anointed Jesus' feet and bathed them with her tears and wiped them with her hair in the house of Simon the Pharisee (<a href='B:490 7:36-50'>Luk 7:36-50</a>); of Zacchaeus, the quisling tax-gatherer (<a href='B:490 19:1-10'>Luk 19:1-10</a>); of the Penitent Thief (<a href='B:490 23:43'>Luk 23:43</a>); and he alone has the immortal story of the prodigal son and the loving father (<a href='B:490 15:11-32'>Luk 15:11-32</a>). When Matthew tells how Jesus sent his disciples out to preach, he says that Jesus told them not to go to the Samaritans or the gentiles (<a href='B:470 10:5'>Mat 10:5</a>); but Luke omits that altogether. All four gospel writers quote from <a href='B:290 40:1-31'>Isa 40:1-31</a> when they give the message of John the Baptist, "Prepare the way of the Lord; make straight in the desert a highway for our God"; but only Luke continues the quotation to its triumphant conclusion, "And all flesh shall see the salvation of God" (<a href='B:290 40:3-5'>Isa 40:3-5</a>; <a href='B:470 3:3'>Mat 3:3</a>; <a href='B:480 1:3'>Mar 1:3</a>; <a href='B:500 1:23'>Joh 1:23</a>; <a href='B:490 3:4'>Luk 3:4</a>; <a href='B:490 3:6'>Luk 3:6</a>). Luke of all the gospel writers sees no limits to the love of God.<p/><b>The Book Beautiful</b><p/> As we study this book we must look for these characteristics. Somehow of all the gospel writers one would have liked to meet Luke best of all, for this gentile doctor with the tremendous vision of the infinite sweep of the love of God must have been a lovely soul. Faber wrote the lines,<p/>There's a wideness in God's mercy,<p/>Like the wideness of the sea;<p/>There's a kindness in his justice,<p/>Which is more than liberty.<p/>For the love of God is broader<p/>Than the measures of man's mind;<p/>And the heart of the Eternal<p/>Is most wonderfully kind.<p/>Luke's gospel is the demonstration that this is true. 


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JOHN<p/>INTRODUCTION TO THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO SAINT JOHN<p/><b>The Gospel Of The Eagle's Eye</b><p/> For many Christian people the Gospel according to St. John is the most precious book in the New Testament. It is the book on which above all they feed their minds and nourish their hearts, and in which they rest their souls. Very often on stained glass windows and the like the gospel writers are represented in symbol by the figures of the four beasts whom the writer of the Revelation saw around the throne (<a href='B:730 4:7'>Rev 4:7</a>). The emblems are variously distributed among the gospel writers, but a common allocation is that the man stands for Mark, which is the plainest, the most straightforward and the most human of the gospels; the lion stands for Matthew, for he specially saw Jesus as the Messiah and the Lion of the tribe of Judah; the ox stands for Luke, because it is the animal of service and sacrifice, and Luke saw Jesus as the great servant of men and the universal sacrifice for all mankind; the eagle stands for John, because it alone of all living creatures can look straight into the sun and not be dazzled, and John has the most penetrating gaze of all the New Testament writers into the eternal mysteries and the eternal truths and the very mind of God. Many people find themselves closer to God and to Jesus Christ in John than in any other book in the world.<p/><b>The Gospel That Is Different</b><p/> But we have only to read the Fourth Gospel in the most cursory way to see that it is quite different from the other three. It omits so many things that they include. The Fourth Gospel has no account of the Birth of Jesus, of his baptism, of his temptations; it tells us nothing of the Last Supper, nothing of Gethsemane, and nothing of the Ascension. It has no word of the healing of any people possessed by devils and evil spirits. And, perhaps most surprising of all, it has none of the parable stories Jesus told which are so priceless a part of the other three gospels. In these other three gospels Jesus speaks either in these wonderful stories or in short, epigrammatic, vivid sentences which stick in the memory. But in the Fourth Gospel the speeches of Jesus are often a whole chapter long; and are often involved, argumentative pronouncements quite unlike the pithy, unforgettable sayings of the other three.<p/>Even more surprising, the account in the Fourth Gospel of the facts of the life and ministry of Jesus is often different from that in the other three.<p/>(i) John has a different account of the beginning of the ministry of Jesus. In the other three gospels it is quite definitely stated that Jesus did not emerge as a preacher until after John the Baptist had been imprisoned. "Now after John was arrested Jesus came into Galilee, preaching the gospel of God" (<a href='B:480 1:14'>Mar 1:14</a>; <a href='B:490 3:18'>Luk 3:18</a>; <a href='B:490 3:20'>Luk 3:20</a>; <a href='B:470 4:12'>Mat 4:12</a>). But in John there is a quite considerable period during which the ministry of Jesus over-lapped with the activity of John the Baptist (<a href='B:500 3:22-30'>Joh 3:22-30</a>; <a href='B:500 4:1-2'>Joh 4:1-2</a>).<p/>(ii) John has a different account of the scene of Jesus' ministry. In the other three gospels the main scene of the ministry is Galilee and Jesus does not reach Jerusalem until the last week of his life. In John the main scene of the ministry is Jerusalem and Judaea, with only occasional withdrawals to Galilee (<a href='B:500 2:1-13'>Joh 2:1-13</a>; <a href='B:500 4:35'>Joh 4:35</a> through <a href='B:500 5:1'>Joh 5:1</a>; <a href='B:500 6:1'>Joh 6:1</a> through <a href='B:500 7:14'>Joh 7:14</a>). In John, Jesus is in Jerusalem for a Passover which occurred at the same time as the cleansing of the Temple, as John tells the story (<a href='B:500 2:13'>Joh 2:13</a>); he is in Jerusalem at the time of an unnamed feast (<a href='B:500 5:1'>Joh 5:1</a>); he is there for the Feast of Tabernacles (<a href='B:500 7:2'>Joh 7:2</a>; <a href='B:500 7:10'>Joh 7:10</a>); he is there at the Feast of Dedication in the winter-time (<a href='B:500 10:22'>Joh 10:22</a>). In fact according to the Fourth Gospel Jesus never left Jerusalem after that feast; after <a href='B:500 10:1-42'>Joh 10:1-42</a> he is in Jerusalem all the time, which would mean a stay of months, from the winter-time of the Feast of the Dedication to the spring-time of the Passover at which he was crucified.<p/>In point of fact in this particular matter John is surely right. The other gospels show us Jesus mourning over Jerusalem as the last week came on. "O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, killing the prophets and stoning those who are sent to you! How often would I have gathered your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you would not!" (<a href='B:470 23:37'>Mat 23:37</a>; <a href='B:490 13:34'>Luk 13:34</a>). It is clear that Jesus could not have said that unless he had paid repeated visits to Jerusalem and made repeated appeals to it. It was impossible for him to say that on a first visit. In this John is unquestionably right.<p/>It was in fact this difference of scene which provided Eusebius with one of the earliest explanations of the difference between the Fourth Gospel and the other three. He said that in his day (about A.D. 300) many people who were scholars held the following view. Matthew at first preached to the Hebrew people. The day came when he had to leave them and to go to other nations. Before he went he set down his story of the life of Jesus in Hebrew, "and thus compensated those whom he was obliged to leave for the loss of his presence." After Mark and Luke had published their gospels, John was still preaching the story of Jesus orally. "Finally he proceeded to write for the following reason. The three gospels already mentioned having come into the hands of all and into his hands too, they say that he fully accepted them and bore witness to their truthfulness; but there was lacking in them an account of the deeds done by Christ at the beginning of his ministry.... They therefore say that John, being asked to do it for this reason, gave in his gospel an account of the period which had been omitted by the earlier evangelists, and of the deeds done by the Saviour during that period; that is, of the deeds done before the imprisonment of John the Baptist.... John therefore records the deeds of Christ which were performed before the Baptist was cast into prison, but the other three evangelists mention the events which happened after that time.... The Gospel according to John contains the first acts of Christ, while the others give an account of the latter part of his life." (Eusebius, The Ecclesiastical History 5: 24:)<p/>So then according to Eusebius there is no contradiction at all between the Fourth Gospel and the other three; the difference is due to the fact that the Fourth Gospel is describing a ministry in Jerusalem, at least in its earlier chapters, which preceded the ministry in Galilee, and which took place while John the Baptist was still at liberty. It may well be that this explanation of Eusebius is at least in part correct.<p/>(iii) John has a different account of the duration of Jesus' ministry. The other three gospels, on the face of it, imply that it lasted only one year. Within the ministry there is only one Passover Feast. In John there are three Passovers, one at the Cleansing of the Temple (<a href='B:500 2:13'>Joh 2:13</a>); one near the Feeding of the Five Thousand (<a href='B:500 6:4'>Joh 6:4</a>); and the final Passover at which Jesus went to the Cross. According to John the ministry of Jesus would take a minimum of two years, and probably a period nearer three years, to cover its events. Again John is unquestionably right. If we read the other three gospels closely and carefully we can see that he is right. When the disciples plucked the ears of corn (<a href='B:480 2:23'>Mar 2:23</a>) it must have been spring-time. When the five thousand were fed, they sat down on the green grass (<a href='B:480 6:39'>Mar 6:39</a>); therefore it was spring-time again, and there must have been a year between the two events. There follows the tour through Tyre and Sidon, and the Transfiguration. At the Transfiguration Peter wished to build three booths and to stay there. It is most natural to think that it was the time of the Feast of Tabernacles or Booths and that that is why Peter made the suggestion (<a href='B:480 9:5'>Mar 9:5</a>). That would make the date early in October. There follows the space between that and the last Passover in April. Therefore, behind the narrative of the other three gospels lies the fact that Jesus' ministry actually did last for at least three years, as John represents it.<p/>(iv) It sometimes even happens that John differs in matters of fact from the other three. There are two outstanding examples. First, John puts the Cleansing of the Temple at the beginning of Jesus' ministry (<a href='B:500 2:13-22'>Joh 2:13-22</a>), the others put it at the end (<a href='B:480 11:15-17'>Mar 11:15-17</a>; <a href='B:470 21:12-13'>Mat 21:12-13</a>; <a href='B:490 19:45-46'>Luk 19:45-46</a>). Second, when we come to study the narratives in detail, we will see that John dates the crucifixion of Jesus on the day before the Passover, while the other gospels date it on the day of the Passover.<p/>We can never shut our eyes to the obvious differences between John and the other gospels.<p/><b>John's Special Knowledge</b><p/> One thing is certain--if John differs from the other three gospels, it is not because of ignorance and lack of information. The plain fact is that, if he omits much that they tell us, he also tells us much that they do not mention. John alone tells of the marriage feast at Cana of Galilee (<a href='B:500 2:1-11'>Joh 2:1-11</a>); of the coming of Nicodemus to Jesus (<a href='B:500 3:1-15'>Joh 3:1-15</a>); of the woman of Samaria <a href='B:500 4:1-54'>Joh 4:1-54</a>; of the raising of Lazarus (<a href='B:500 11:1-57'>Joh 11:1-57</a>); of the way in which Jesus washed his disciples' feet (<a href='B:500 13:1-17'>Joh 13:1-17</a>); of Jesus' wonderful teaching about the Holy Spirit, the Comforter, which is scattered through <a href='B:500 14:1-31'>Joh 14:1-31</a> <a href='B:500 15:1-27'>Joh 15:1-27</a> <a href='B:500 16:1-33'>Joh 16:1-33</a> and <a href='B:500 17:1-26'>Joh 17:1-26</a>. It is only in John that some of the disciples really come alive. It is in John alone that Thomas speaks (<a href='B:500 11:16'>Joh 11:16</a>; <a href='B:500 14:5'>Joh 14:5</a>; <a href='B:500 20:24-29'>Joh 20:24-29</a>); that Andrew becomes a real personality (<a href='B:500 1:40-41'>Joh 1:40-41</a>; <a href='B:500 6:8-9'>Joh 6:8-9</a>; <a href='B:500 12:22'>Joh 12:22</a>); that we get a glimpse of the character of Philip (<a href='B:500 6:5-7'>Joh 6:5-7</a>; <a href='B:500 14:8-9'>Joh 14:8-9</a>); that we hear the carping protest of Judas at the anointing at Bethany (<a href='B:500 12:4-5'>Joh 12:4-5</a>). And the strange thing is that these little extra touches are intensely revealing. John's pictures of Thomas and Andrew and Philip are like little cameos or vignettes in which the character of each man is etched in a way we cannot forget.<p/>Further, again and again John has little extra details which read like the memories of one who was there. The loaves which the lad brought to Jesus were barley loaves (<a href='B:500 6:9'>Joh 6:9</a>); when Jesus came to the disciples as they crossed the lake in the storm they had rowed between three and four miles (<a href='B:500 6:19'>Joh 6:19</a>); there were six stone waterpots at Cana of Galilee (<a href='B:500 2:6'>Joh 2:6</a>); it is only John who tells of the four soldiers gambling for the seamless robe as Jesus died (<a href='B:500 19:23'>Joh 19:23</a>); he knows the exact weight of the myrrh and aloes which were used to anoint the dead body of Jesus (<a href='B:500 19:39'>Joh 19:39</a>); he remembers how the perfume of the ointment filled the house at the anointing at Bethany (<a href='B:500 12:3'>Joh 12:3</a>). Many of these things are such apparently unimportant details that they are inexplicable unless they are the memories of a man who was there.<p/>However much John may differ from the other three gospels, that difference is not to be explained by ignorance but rather by the fact that he had more knowledge or better sources or a more vivid memory than the others.<p/>Further evidence of the specialised information of the writer of the Fourth Gospel is his detailed knowledge of Palestine and of Jerusalem. He knows how long it took to build the Temple (<a href='B:500 2:20'>Joh 2:20</a>); that the Jews and the Samaritans had a permanent quarrel (<a href='B:500 4:9'>Joh 4:9</a>); the low Jewish view of women (<a href='B:500 4:9'>Joh 4:9</a>); the way in which the Jews regard the Sabbath (<a href='B:500 5:10'>Joh 5:10</a>; <a href='B:500 7:21-23'>Joh 7:21-23</a>; <a href='B:500 9:14'>Joh 9:14</a>). His knowledge of the geography of Palestine is intimate. He knows of two Bethanys, one of which is beyond Jordan (<a href='B:500 1:28'>Joh 1:28</a>; <a href='B:500 12:1'>Joh 12:1</a>); he knows that Bethsaida was the home of some of the disciples (<a href='B:500 1:44'>Joh 1:44</a>; <a href='B:500 12:21'>Joh 12:21</a>); that Cana is in Galilee (<a href='B:500 2:1'>Joh 2:1</a>; <a href='B:500 4:46'>Joh 4:46</a>; <a href='B:500 21:2'>Joh 21:2</a>); that Sychar is near Shechem (<a href='B:500 4:5'>Joh 4:5</a>). He has what one might call a street by street knowledge of Jerusalem. He knows the sheep-gate and the pool near it (<a href='B:500 5:2'>Joh 5:2</a>); the pool of Siloam (<a href='B:500 9:7'>Joh 9:7</a>); Solomon's Porch (<a href='B:500 10:23'>Joh 10:23</a>); the brook Kidron (<a href='B:500 18:1'>Joh 18:1</a>); the pavement which is called Gabbatha (<a href='B:500 19:13'>Joh 19:13</a>); Golgotha, which is like a skull (<a href='B:500 19:17'>Joh 19:17</a>). It must be remembered that Jerusalem was destroyed in A.D. 70 and that John did not write until A.D. 100 or thereby; and yet from his memory he knows Jerusalem like the back of his hand.<p/><b>The Circumstances In Which John Wrote</b><p/> We have seen that there are very real differences between the Fourth and the other three gospels; and we have seen that, whatever the reason, it was not lack of knowledge on John's part. We must now go on to ask, What was the aim with which John wrote? If we can discover this we will discover why he selected and treated his facts as he did.<p/>The Fourth Gospel was written in Ephesus about the year A.D. 100: By that time two special features had emerged in the situation of the Christian church. First, Christianity had gone out into the Gentile world. By that time the Christian church was no longer predominantly Jewish; it was in fact overwhelmingly gentile. The vast majority of its members now came, not from a Jewish, but an Hellenistic background. That being so, Christianity had to be restated. It was not that the truth of Christianity had changed; but the terms and the categories in which it found expression had to be changed.<p/>Take but one instance. A Greek might take up the Gospel according to St. Matthew. No sooner had he opened it than he was confronted with a long genealogy. Genealogies were familiar enough to the Jew but quite unintelligible to the Greek. He would read on. He would be confronted with a Jesus who was the Son of David, a king of whom the Greeks had never heard, and the symbol of a racial and nationalist ambition which was nothing to the Greek. He would be faced with the picture of Jesus as Messiah, a term of which the Greek had never heard. Must the Greek who wished to become a Christian be compelled to reorganize his whole thinking into Jewish categories? Must he learn a good deal about Jewish history and Jewish apocalyptic literature (which told about the coming of the Messiah) before he could become a Christian? As E. J. Goodspeed phrased it: "Was there no way in which he might be introduced directly to the values of Christian salvation without being for ever routed, we might even say, detoured, through Judaism?" The Greek was one of the world's great thinkers. Had he to abandon all his own great intellectual heritage in order to think entirely in Jewish terms and categories of thought?<p/>John faced that problem fairly and squarely. And he found one of the greatest solutions which ever entered the mind of man. Later on, in the commentary, we shall deal much more fully with John's great solution. At the moment we touch on it briefly. The Greeks had two great conceptions.<p/>(a) They had the conception of the Logos. In Greek logos (<a href='S:G3056'>G3056</a>) means two things--it means word and it means reason. The Jew was entirely familiar with the all-powerful word of God. "God said, Let there be light; and there was light" (<a href='B:10 1:3'>Gen 1:3</a>). The Greek was entirely familiar with the thought of reason. He looked at this world; he saw a magnificent and dependable order. Night and day came with unfailing regularity; the year kept its seasons in unvarying course; the stars and the planets moved in their unaltering path; nature had her unvarying laws. What produced this order? The Greek answered unhesitatingly, The Logos (<a href='S:G3056'>G3056</a>), the mind of God, is responsible for the majestic order of the world. He went on, What is it that gives man power to think, to reason and to know? Again he answered unhesitatingly, The Logos (<a href='S:G3056'>G3056</a>), the mind of God, dwelling within a man makes him a thinking rational being.<p/>John seized on this. It was in this way that he thought of Jesus. He said to the Greeks, "All your lives you have been fascinated by this great, guiding, controlling mind of God. The mind of God has come to earth in the man Jesus. Look at him and you see what the mind and thought of God are like." John had discovered a new category in which the Greek might think of Jesus, a category in which Jesus was presented as nothing less than God acting in the form of a man.<p/>(b) They had the conception of two worlds. The Greek always conceived of two worlds. The one was the world in which we live. It was a wonderful world in its way but a world of shadows and copies and unrealities. The other was the real world, in which the great realities, of which our earthly things are only poor, pale copies, stand for ever. To the Greek the unseen world was the real one; the seen world was only shadowy unreality.<p/>Plato systematized this way of thinking in his doctrine of forms or ideas. He held that in the unseen world there was the perfect pattern of everything, and the things of this world were shadowy copies of these eternal patterns. To put it simply, Plato held that somewhere there was a perfect pattern of a table of which all earthly tables are inadequate copies; somewhere there was the perfect pattern of the good and the beautiful of which all earthly goodness and earthly beauty are imperfect copies. And the great reality, the supreme idea, the pattern of all patterns and the form of all forms was God. The great problem was how to get into this world of reality, how to get out of our shadows into the eternal truths.<p/>John declares that that is what Jesus enables us to do. He is reality come to earth. The Greek word for real in this sense is alethinos (<a href='S:G228'>G228</a>) ; it is very closely connected with the word alethes (<a href='S:G227'>G227</a>), which means true, and aletheia (<a href='S:G225'>G225</a>), which means "the truth." The King James and Revised Standard Versions translate alethinos (<a href='S:G228'>G228</a>) true; they would be far better to translate it "real." Jesus is the real light (<a href='B:500 1:9'>Joh 1:9</a>); Jesus is the real bread (<a href='B:500 6:32'>Joh 6:32</a>); Jesus is the real vine (<a href='B:500 15:1'>Joh 15:1</a>); to Jesus belongs the real judgment (<a href='B:500 8:16'>Joh 8:16</a>). Jesus alone has reality in our world of shadows and imperfections.<p/>Something follows from that. Every action that Jesus did was, therefore, not only an act in time but a window which allows us to see into reality. That is what John means when he talks of Jesus' miracles as signs (semeia - <a href='S:G4592'>G4592</a>). The wonderful works of Jesus were not simply wonderful; they were windows opening onto the reality which is God. This explains why John tells the miracle stories in a quite different way from the other three gospel writers. There are two differences.<p/>(a) In the Fourth Gospel we miss the note of compassion which is in the miracle stories of the others. In the others Jesus is moved with compassion for the leper (<a href='B:480 1:41'>Mar 1:41</a>); his sympathy goes out to Jairus (<a href='B:480 5:22'>Mar 5:22</a>); he is sorry for the father of the epileptic boy (<a href='B:480 9:14'>Mar 9:14</a>); when he raises to life the son of the widow of Nain, Luke says with an infinite tenderness, "He gave him to his mother" (<a href='B:490 7:15'>Luk 7:15</a>). But in John the miracles are not so much deeds of compassion as deeds which demonstrate the glory of Christ. After the miracle at Cana of Galilee, John comments: "This, the first of his signs, Jesus did at Cana in Galilee, and manifested his glory" (<a href='B:500 2:11'>Joh 2:11</a>). The raising of Lazarus happens "for the glory of God" (<a href='B:500 11:4'>Joh 11:4</a>). The blind man's blindness existed to allow a demonstration of the glory of the works of God (<a href='B:500 9:3'>Joh 9:3</a>). To John it was not that there was no love and compassion in the miracles; but in every one of them he saw the glory of the reality of God breaking into time and into human affairs.<p/>(b) Often the miracles of Jesus in the Fourth Gospel are accompanied by a long discourse. The feeding of the five thousand is followed by the long discourse on the bread of life (<a href='B:500 6:1-71'>Joh 6:1-71</a>); the healing of the blind man springs from the saying that Jesus is the light of the world (<a href='B:500 9:1-41'>Joh 9:1-41</a>); the raising of Lazarus leads up to the saying that Jesus is the resurrection and the life (<a href='B:500 11:1-57'>Joh 11:1-57</a>). To John the miracles were not simply single events in time; they were insights into what God is always doing and what Jesus always is; they were windows into the reality of God. Jesus did not merely once feed five thousand people; that was an illustration that he is for ever the real bread of life. Jesus did not merely once open the eyes of a blind man; he is for ever the light of the world. Jesus did not merely once raise Lazarus from the dead; he is for ever and for all men the resurrection and the life. To John a miracle was never an isolated act; it was always a window into the reality of what Jesus always was and always is and always did and always does.<p/>It was with this in mind that that great scholar Clement of Alexandria (about A.D. 230) arrived at one of the most famous and true of all verdicts about the origin and aim of the Fourth Gospel. It was his view that the gospels containing the genealogies had been written first--that is, Luke and Matthew; that then Mark at the request of many who had heard Peter preach composed his gospel, which embodied the preaching material of Peter; and that then "last of all, John, perceiving that what had reference to the bodily things of Jesus' ministry had been sufficiently related, and encouraged by his friends, and inspired by the Holy Spirit, wrote a spiritual gospel" (quoted in Eusebius, The Ecclesiastical History 6 : 14). What Clement meant was that John was not so much interested in the mere facts as in the meaning of the facts, that it was not facts he was after but truth. John did not see the events of Jesus' life simply as events in time; he saw them as windows looking into eternity, and he pressed towards the spiritual meaning of the events and the words of Jesus' life in a way that the other three gospels did not attempt.<p/>That is still one of the truest verdicts on the Fourth Gospel ever reached. John did write, not an historical, but a spiritual gospel.<p/>So then, first of all, John presented Jesus as the mind of God in a person come to earth, and as the one person who possesses reality instead of shadows and able to lead men out of the shadows into the real world of which Plato and the great Greeks had dreamed. The Christianity which had once been clothed in Jewish categories had taken to itself the greatness of the thought of the Greeks.<p/><b>The Rise Of The Heresies</b><p/> The second of the great facts confronting the church when the Fourth Gospel was written was the rise of heresy. It was now seventy years since Jesus had been crucified. By this time the church was an organisation and an institution. Theologies and creeds were being thought out and stated; and inevitably the thoughts of some people went down mistaken ways and heresies resulted. A heresy is seldom a complete untruth; it usually results when one facet of the truth is unduly emphasised. We can see at least two of the heresies which the writer of the Fourth Gospel sought to combat.<p/>(a) There were certain Christians, especially Jewish Christians, who gave too high a place to John the Baptist. There was something about him which had an inevitable appeal to the Jews. He walked in the prophetic succession and talked with the prophetic voice. We know that in later times there was an accepted sect of John the Baptist within the orthodox Jewish faith. In <a href='B:510 19:1-7'>Act 19:1-7</a> we come upon a little group of twelve men on the fringe of the Christian church who had never gotten beyond the baptism of John.<p/>Over and over again the Fourth Gospel quietly, but definitely, relegates John to his proper place. Over and over again John himself denies that he has ever claimed or possessed the highest place, and without qualification yields that place to Jesus. We have already seen that in the other gospels the ministry of Jesus did not begin until John the Baptist had been put into prison, but that in the Fourth Gospel their ministries overlap. The writer of the Fourth Gospel may well have used that arrangement to show John and Jesus in actual meeting and to show that John used these meetings to admit, and to urge others to admit, the supremacy of Jesus. It is carefully pointed out that John is not that light (<a href='B:500 1:8'>Joh 1:8</a>). He is shown as quite definitely disclaiming all Messianic aspirations (<a href='B:500 1:20'>Joh 1:20</a> ff; <a href='B:500 3:28'>Joh 3:28</a>; <a href='B:500 4:1'>Joh 4:1</a>; <a href='B:500 10:41'>Joh 10:41</a>). It is not even permissible to think of him as the highest witness (<a href='B:500 5:36'>Joh 5:36</a>). There is no criticism at all of John the Baptist in the Fourth Gospel; but there is a rebuke to those who would give him a place which ought to belong to Jesus and to Jesus alone.<p/>(b) A certain type of heresy which was very widely spread in the days when the Fourth Gospel was written is called by the general name of Gnosticism. Without some understanding of it much of John's greatness and much of his aim will be missed. The basic doctrine of Gnosticism was that matter is essentially evil and spirit is essentially good. The Gnostics went on to argue that on that basis God himself cannot touch matter and therefore did not create the world. What he did was to put out a series of emanations. Each of these emanations was further from him, until at last there was one so distant from him that it could touch matter. That emanation was the creator of the world.<p/>By itself that idea is bad enough, but it was made worse by an addition. The Gnostics held that each emanation knew less and less about God, until there was a stage when the emanations were not only ignorant of God but actually hostile to him. So they finally came to the conclusion that the creator god was not only different from the real God, but was also quite ignorant of and actively hostile to him. Cerinthus, one of the leaders of the Gnostics, said that "the world was created, not by God, but by a certain power far separate from him, and far distant from that Power who is over the universe, and ignorant of the God who is over all."<p/>The Gnostics believed that God had nothing to do with the creating of the world. That is why John begins his gospel with the ringing statement: "All things were made through him; and without him was not anything made that was made" (<a href='B:500 1:3'>Joh 1:3</a>). That is why John insists that "God so loved the world" (<a href='B:500 3:16'>Joh 3:16</a>). In face of the Gnostics who so mistakenly spiritualized God into a being who could not possibly have anything to do with the world, John presented the Christian doctrine of the God who made the world and whose presence fills the world that he has made.<p/>The beliefs of the Gnostics impinged on their ideas of Jesus.<p/>(a) Some of the Gnostics held that Jesus was one of the emanations which had proceeded from God. They held that he was not in any real sense divine; that he was only a kind of demigod who was more or less distant from the real God; that he was simply one of a chain of lesser beings between God and the world.<p/>(b) Some of the Gnostics held that Jesus had no real body. A body is matter and God could not touch matter; therefore Jesus was a kind of phantom without real flesh and blood. They held, for instance, that when he stepped on the ground he left no footprint, for his body had neither weight nor substance. They could never have said: "The Word became flesh" (<a href='B:500 1:14'>Joh 1:14</a>). Augustine tells how he had read much in the work of the philosophers of his day; he had found much that was very like what was in the New Testament, but, he said: "'The Word was made flesh and dwelt among us' I did not read there." That is why John in his First Letter insists that Jesus came in the flesh, and declares that any one who denies that fact is moved by the spirit of antichrist (<a href='B:690 4:3'>1Jn 4:3</a>). This particular heresy is known as Docetism. Docetism comes from the Greek word dokein (<a href='S:G1380'>G1380</a>) which means to seem ; and the heresy is so called because it held that Jesus only seemed to be a man.<p/>(c) Some Gnostics held a variation of that heresy. They held that Jesus was a man into whom the Spirit of God came at his baptism; that Spirit remained with him throughout his life until the end; but since the Spirit of God could never suffer and die, it left him before he was crucified. They gave Jesus' cry on the Cross as : "My power, my power, why hast thou forsaken me?" And in their books they told of people talking on the Mount of Olives to a form which looked exactly like Jesus while the man Jesus died on the Cross.<p/>So then the Gnostic heresies issued in one of two beliefs. They believed either that Jesus was not really divine but simply one of a series of emanations from God, or that he was not in any sense human but a kind of phantom in the shape of a man. The Gnostic beliefs at one and the same time destroyed the real godhead and the real manhood of Jesus.<p/><b>The Humanity Of Jesus</b><p/> The fact that John is out to correct both these Gnostic tendencies explains a curious paradoxical double emphasis in his gospel. On the one hand, there is no gospel which so uncompromisingly stresses the real humanity of Jesus. Jesus was angry with those who bought and sold in the Temple courts (<a href='B:500 2:15'>Joh 2:15</a>); he was physically tired as he sat by the well which was near Sychar in Samaria (<a href='B:500 4:6'>Joh 4:6</a>); his disciples offered him food in the way in which they would offer it to any hungry man (<a href='B:500 4:31'>Joh 4:31</a>); he had sympathy with those who were hungry and with those who were afraid (<a href='B:500 6:5'>Joh 6:5</a>; <a href='B:500 6:20'>Joh 6:20</a>); he knew grief and he wept tears as any mourner might do (<a href='B:500 11:33'>Joh 11:33</a>; <a href='B:500 11:35'>Joh 11:35</a>; <a href='B:500 11:38'>Joh 11:38</a>); in the agony of the Cross the cry of his parched lips was: "I thirst" (<a href='B:500 19:28'>Joh 19:28</a>). The Fourth Gospel shows us a Jesus who was no shadowy, docetic figure; it shows us one who knew the weariness of an exhausted body and the wounds of a distressed mind and heart. It is the truly human Jesus whom the Fourth Gospel sets before us.<p/><b>The Deity Of Jesus</b><p/> On the other hand, there is no gospel which sets before us such a view of the deity of Jesus.<p/>(a) John stresses the preexistence of Jesus. "Before Abraham was," said Jesus, "I am" (<a href='B:500 8:58'>Joh 8:58</a>). He talks of the glory which he had with the Father before the world was made (<a href='B:500 17:5'>Joh 17:5</a>). Again and again he speaks of his coming down from heaven (<a href='B:500 6:33-38'>Joh 6:33-38</a>). John saw in Jesus one who had always been, even before the world began.<p/>(b) The Fourth Gospel stresses more than any of the others the omniscience of Jesus. It is John's view that apparently miraculously Jesus knew the past record of the woman of Samaria (<a href='B:500 4:16-17'>Joh 4:16-17</a>); apparently without anyone telling him he knew how long the man beside the healing pool had been ill (<a href='B:500 5:6'>Joh 5:6</a>); before he asked it, he knew the answer to the question he put to Philip (<a href='B:500 6:6'>Joh 6:6</a>); he knew that Judas would betray him (<a href='B:500 6:61-64'>Joh 6:61-64</a>); he knew of the death of Lazarus before anyone told him of it (<a href='B:500 11:14'>Joh 11:14</a>). John saw in Jesus one who had a special and miraculous knowledge independent of anything which any man might tell him. He needed to ask no questions because he knew all the answers.<p/>(c) The Fourth Gospel stresses the fact, as John saw it, that Jesus always acted entirely on his own initiative and uninfluenced by anyone else. It was not his mother's request which moved him to the miracle at Cana of Galilee; it was his own personal decision (<a href='B:500 2:4'>Joh 2:4</a>); the urging of his brothers had nothing to do with the visit which he paid to Jerusalem at the Feast of Tabernacles (<a href='B:500 7:10'>Joh 7:10</a>); no man took his life from him--no man could; he laid it down purely voluntarily (<a href='B:500 10:18'>Joh 10:18</a>; <a href='B:500 19:11'>Joh 19:11</a>). As John saw it, Jesus had a divine independence from all human influence. He was self-determined.<p/>To meet the Gnostics and their strange beliefs John presents us with a Jesus who was undeniably human and who yet was undeniably divine.<p/><b>The Author Of The Fourth Gospel</b><p/> We have seen that the aim of the writer of the Fourth Gospel was to present the Christian faith in such a way that it would commend itself to the Greek world to which Christianity had gone out, and also to combat the heresies and mistaken ideas which had arisen within the church. We go on to ask, Who is that writer? Tradition answers unanimously that the author was John the apostle. We shall see that beyond doubt the authority of John lies behind the gospel, although it may well be that its actual form and penmanship did not come from his hand. Let us, then, collect what we know about him.<p/>He was the younger son of Zebedee, who possessed a fishing boat on the Sea of Galilee and was well enough off to be able to employ hired servants to help him with his work (<a href='B:480 1:19-20'>Mar 1:19-20</a>). His mother was Salome, and it seems likely that she was the sister of Mary, the mother of Jesus (<a href='B:470 27:56'>Mat 27:56</a>; <a href='B:480 16:1'>Mar 16:1</a>). With his brother James he obeyed the call of Jesus (<a href='B:480 1:20'>Mar 1:20</a>). It would seem that James and John were in partnership with Peter in the fishing trade (<a href='B:490 5:7-10'>Luk 5:7-10</a>). He was one of the inner circle of the disciples, for the lists of the disciples always begin with the names of Peter, James and John, and there were certain great occasions when Jesus took these three specially with him (<a href='B:480 3:17'>Mar 3:17</a>; <a href='B:480 5:37'>Mar 5:37</a>; <a href='B:480 9:2'>Mar 9:2</a>; <a href='B:480 14:33'>Mar 14:33</a>).<p/>In character he was clearly a turbulent and ambitious man. Jesus gave to him and to his brother the name Boanerges, which the gospel writers take to mean Sons of Thunder. John and his brother James were completely exclusive and intolerant (<a href='B:480 9:38'>Mar 9:38</a>; <a href='B:490 9:49'>Luk 9:49</a>). So violent was their temper that they were prepared to blast a Samaritan village out of existence because it would not give them hospitality when they were on their journey to Jerusalem (<a href='B:490 9:54'>Luk 9:54</a>). Either they or their mother Salome had the ambition that when Jesus came into his kingdom, they might be his principal ministers of state (<a href='B:480 10:35'>Mar 10:35</a>; <a href='B:470 20:20'>Mat 20:20</a>). In the other three gospels John appears as a leader of the apostolic band, one of the inner circle, and yet a turbulent ambitious and intolerant character.<p/>In the Book of Acts John always appears as the companion of Peter, and he himself never speaks at all. His name is still one of the three names at the head of the apostolic list (<a href='B:510 1:13'>Act 1:13</a>). He is with Peter when the lame man is healed at the Beautiful Gate of the Temple (<a href='B:510 3:1'>Act 3:1</a> ff). With Peter he is brought before the Sanhedrin and faces the Jewish leaders with a courage and a boldness that astonished them (<a href='B:510 4:1-13'>Act 4:1-13</a>). With Peter he goes from Jerusalem to Samaria to survey the work done by Philip (<a href='B:510 8:14'>Act 8:14</a>).<p/>In Paul's letters he appears only once. In <a href='B:550 2:9'>Gal 2:9</a> he is named as one of the pillars of the church along with Peter and James, and with them is depicted as giving his approval to the work of Paul.<p/>John was a strange mixture. He was one of the leaders of the Twelve; he was one of the inner circle of Jesus' closest friends; at the same time he was a man of temper and ambition and intolerance, and yet of courage.<p/>We may follow John into the stories told of him in the early church. Eusebius tells us that he was banished to Patmos in the reign of Domitian (Eusebius, The Ecclesiastical History 3 : 23). In the same passage Eusebius tells a characteristic story about John, a story which he received from Clement of Alexandria. John became a kind of bishop of Asia Minor and was visiting one of his churches near Ephesus. In the congregation he saw a tall and exceptionally fine-looking young man. He turned to the elder in charge of the congregation and said to him: "I commit that young man into your charge and into your care, and I call this congregation to witness that I do so." The elder took the young man into his own house and cared for him and instructed him, and the day came when he was baptized and received into the church. But very soon afterwards he fell in with evil friends and embarked on such a career of crime that he ended up by becoming the leader of a band of murdering and pillaging brigands. Some time afterwards John returned to the congregation. He said to the elder: "Restore to me the trust which I and the Lord committed to you and to the church of which you are in charge." At first the elder did not understand of what John was speaking. "I mean, said John, "that I am asking you for the soul of the young man whom I entrusted to you." "Alas!" said the elder, "he is dead." "Dead?" said John. "He is dead to God, said the elder. "He fell from grace; he was forced to flee from the city for his crimes and now he is a brigand in the mountains." Straightway John went to the mountains. Deliberately he allowed himself to be captured by the robber band. They brought him before the young man who was now the chief of the band and, in his shame, the young man tried to run away from him. John, though an old man, pursued him. "My son, he cried, "are you running away from your father? I am feeble and far advanced in age; have pity on me, my son; fear not; there is yet hope of salvation for you. I will stand for you before the Lord Christ. If need be I will gladly die for you as he died for me. Stop, stay, believe! It is Christ who has sent me to you." The appeal broke the heart of the young man. He stopped, threw away his weapons, and wept. Together he and John came down the mountainside and he was brought back into the church and into the Christian way. There we see the love and the courage of John still in operation.<p/>Eusebius (3 : 28) tells another story of John which he got from the works of Irenaeus. We have seen that one of the leaders of the Gnostic heresy was a man called Cerinthus. "The apostle John once entered a bath to bathe; but, when he learned that Cerinthus was within, he sprang from his place and rushed out of the door, for he could not bear to remain under the same roof with him. He advised those who were with him to do the same. 'Let us flee,' he said, 'lest the bath fall, for Cerinthus, the enemy of the truth, is within."' There we have another glimpse of the temper of John. Boanerges was not quite dead.<p/>Cassian tells another famous story about John. One day he was found playing with a tame partridge. A narrower and more rigid brother rebuked him for thus wasting his time, and John answered: "The bow that is always bent will soon cease to shoot straight."<p/>It is Jerome who tells the story of the last words of John. When he was dying, his disciples asked him if he had any last message to leave them. "Little children, he said, "love one another." Again and again he repeated it; and they asked him if that was all he had to say. "It is enough, he said, "for it is the Lord's command."<p/>Such then is our information about John; and he emerges a figure of fiery temper, of wide ambition, of undoubted courage, and, in the end, of gentle love.<p/><b>The Beloved Disciple</b><p/> If we have been following our references closely we will have noticed one thing. All our information about John comes from the first three gospels. It is the astonishing fact that the Fourth Gospel never mentions the apostle John from beginning to end. But it does mention two other people.<p/>First, it speaks of the disciple whom Jesus loved. There are four mentions of him. He was leaning on Jesus' breast at the Last Supper (<a href='B:500 13:23-25'>Joh 13:23-25</a>); it is into his care that Jesus committed Mary as he died upon his Cross (<a href='B:500 19:25-27'>Joh 19:25-27</a>); it was Peter and he whom Mary Magdalene met on her return from the empty tomb on the first Easter morning (<a href='B:500 20:2'>Joh 20:2</a>); he was present at the last resurrection appearance of Jesus by the lake-side (<a href='B:500 21:20'>Joh 21:20</a>).<p/>Second, the Fourth Gospel has a kind of character whom we might call the witness. As the Fourth Gospel tells of the spear thrust into the side of Jesus and the issue of the water and the blood, there comes the comment: "He who saw it has borne witness--his testimony is true, and he knows that he tells the truth--that you also may believe" (<a href='B:500 19:35'>Joh 19:35</a>). At the end of the gospel comes the statement that it was the beloved disciple who testified of these things "and we know that his testimony is true" (<a href='B:500 21:24'>Joh 21:24</a>).<p/>Here we are faced with rather a strange thing. In the Fourth Gospel John is never mentioned, but the beloved disciple is and in addition there is a witness of some kind to the whole story. It has never really been doubted in tradition that the beloved disciple is John. A few have tried to identify him with Lazarus, for Jesus is said to have loved Lazarus (<a href='B:500 11:3'>Joh 11:3</a>; <a href='B:500 11:5'>Joh 11:5</a>), or with the Rich Young Ruler, of whom it is said that Jesus, looking on him, loved him (<a href='B:480 10:21'>Mar 10:21</a>). But although the gospel never says so in so many words, tradition has always identified the beloved disciple with John, and there is no real need to doubt the identification.<p/>But a very real point arises--suppose John himself actually did the writing of the gospel, would he really be likely to speak of himself as the disciple whom Jesus loved? Would he really be likely to pick himself out like this, and, as it were, to say: "I was his favourite; he loved me best of all"? It is surely very unlikely that John would confer such a title on himself. If it was conferred by others, it is a lovely title; if it was conferred by himself, it comes perilously near to an almost incredible self-conceit.<p/>Is there any way then that the gospel can be John's own eye-witness story, and yet at the same time have been actually written down by someone else?<p/><b>The Production Of The Church</b><p/> In our search for the truth we begin by noting one of the outstanding and unique features of the Fourth Gospel. The most remarkable thing about it is the long speeches of Jesus. Often they are whole chapters long, and are entirely unlike the way in which Jesus is portrayed as speaking in the other three gospels. The Fourth Gospel, as we have seen, was written about the year A.D. 100, that is, about seventy years after the crucifixion. Is it possible after these seventy years to look on these speeches as word for word reports of what Jesus said? Or can we explain them in some way that is perhaps even greater than that? We must begin by holding in our minds the fact of the speeches and the question which they inevitably raise.<p/>And we have something to add to that. It so happens that in the writings of the early church we have a whole series of accounts of the way in which the Fourth Gospel came to be written. The earliest is that of Irenaeus who was bishop of Lyons about A.D. 177; and Irenaeus was himself a pupil of Polycarp, who in turn had actually been a pupil of John. There is therefore a direct link between Irenaeus and John. Irenaeus writes:<p/>"John, the disciple of the Lord, who also leant upon his breast,<p/>himself also published the gospel in Ephesus, when he was living<p/>in Asia."<p/>The suggestive thing there is that Irenaeus does not merely say that John wrote the gospel; he says that John published (exedoke) it in Ephesus. The word that Irenaeus uses makes it sound, not like the private publication of some personal memoir, but like the public issue of some almost official document.<p/>The next account is that of Clement who was head of the great school of Alexandria about A.D. 230: He writes:<p/>"Last of all, John perceiving that the bodily facts had been made<p/>plain in the gospel, being urged by his friends, composed a<p/>spiritual gospel."<p/>The important thing here is the phrase being urged by his friends. It begins to become clear that the Fourth Gospel is far more than one man's personal production and that there is a group, a community, a church behind it. On the same lines, a tenth-century manuscript called the Codex Toletanus, which prefaces the New Testament books with short descriptions, prefaces the Fourth Gospel thus:<p/>The apostle John, whom the Lord Jesus loved most, last of all<p/>wrote this gospel, at the request of the bishops of Asia, against<p/>Cerinthus and other heretics."<p/>Again we have the idea that behind the Fourth Gospel there is the authority of a group and of a church.<p/>We now turn to a very important document, known as the Muratorian Canon. It is so called after a scholar Muratori who discovered it. It is the first list of New Testament books which the church ever issued and was compiled in Rome about A.D. 170: Not only does it list the New Testament books, it also gives short accounts of the origin and nature and contents of each of them. Its account of the way in which the Fourth Gospel came to be written is extremely important and illuminating.<p/>"At the request of his fellow-disciples and of his bishops, John,<p/>one of the disciples, said: 'Fast with me for three days from<p/>this time and whatsoever shall be revealed to each of us, whether<p/>it be favourable to my writing or not, let us relate it to one<p/>another.' On the same night it was revealed to Andrew that John<p/>should relate all things, aided by the revision of all."<p/>We cannot accept all that statement, because it is not possible that Andrew, the apostle, was in Ephesus in A.D. 100; but the point is that it is stated as clearly as possible that, while the authority and the mind and the memory behind the Fourth Gospel are that of John, it is clearly and definitely the product, not of one man, but of a group and a community.<p/>Now we can see something of what happened. About the year A.D. 100 there was a group of men in Ephesus whose leader was John. They revered him as a saint and they loved him as a father. He must have been almost a hundred years old. Before he died, they thought most wisely that it would be a great thing if the aged apostle set down his memories of the years when he had been with Jesus. But in the end they did far more than that. We can think of them sitting down and reliving the old days. One would say: "Do you remember how Jesus said... ?" And John would say: "Yes, and now we know that he meant..."<p/>In other words this group was not only writing down what Jesus said; that would have been a mere feat of memory. They were writing down what Jesus meant; that was the guidance of the Holy Spirit. John had thought about every word that Jesus had said; and he had thought under the guidance of the Holy Spirit who was so real to him. W. M. Macgregor has a sermon entitled: "What Jesus becomes to a man who has known him long." That is a perfect description of the Jesus of the Fourth Gospel. A. H. N. Green Armytage puts the thing perfectly in his book John who saw. Mark, he says, suits the missionary with his clear-cut account of the facts of Jesus' life; Matthew suits the teacher with his systematic account of the teaching of Jesus; Luke suits the parish minister or priest with his wide sympathy and his picture of Jesus as the friend of all; but John is the gospel of the contemplative.<p/>He goes on to speak of the apparent contrast between Mark and John. "The two gospels are in a sense the same gospel. Only, where Mark saw things plainly, bluntly, literally, John saw them subtly, profoundly, spiritually. We might say that John lit Mark's pages by the lantern of a lifetime's meditation." Wordsworth defined poetry as "Emotion recollected in tranquillity ". That is a perfect description of the Fourth Gospel. That is why John is unquestionably the greatest of all the gospels. Its aim is, not to give us what Jesus said like a newspaper report, but to give us what Jesus meant. In it the Risen Christ still speaks. John is not so much The Gospel according to St. John; it is rather The Gospel according to the Holy Spirit. It was not John of Ephesus who wrote the Fourth Gospel; it was the Holy Spirit who wrote it through John.<p/><b>The Penman Of The Gospel</b><p/> We have one question still to ask. We can be quite sure that the mind and the memory behind the Fourth Gospel is that of John the apostle; but we have also seen that behind it is a witness who was the writer, in the sense that he was the actual penman. Can we find out who he was? We know from what the early church writers tell us that there were actually two Johns in Ephesus at the same time. There was John the apostle, but there was another John, who was known as John the elder.<p/>Papias, who loved to collect all that he could find about the history of the New Testament and the story of Jesus, gives us some very interesting information. He was Bishop of Hierapolis, which is quite near Ephesus, and his dates are from about A.D. 70 to about A.D. 145: That is to say, he was actually a contemporary of John. He writes how he tried to find out "what Andrew said or what Peter said, or what was said by Philip, by Thomas, or by James, or by John, or by Matthew, or by any other of the disciples of the Lord; and what things Aristion and the elder John, the disciples of the Lord, say." In Ephesus there was the apostle John, and the elder John; and the elder John was so well-loved a figure that he was actually known as The Elder. He clearly had a unique place in the church. Both Eusebius and Dionysius the Great tell us that even to their own days in Ephesus there were two famous tombs, the one of John the apostle, and the other of John the elder.<p/>Now let us turn to the two little letters, Second John and Third John. The letters come from the same hand as the gospel, and how do they begin? The second letter begins: "The elder unto the elect lady and her children" (<a href='B:700 1:1'>2Jn 1:1</a>). The third letter begins: "The elder unto the beloved Gaius" (<a href='B:710 1:1'>3Jn 1:1</a>). Here we have our solution. The actual penman of the letters was John the elder; the mind and memory behind them was the aged John the apostle, the master whom John the elder always described as "the disciple whom Jesus loved."<p/><b>The Precious Gospel</b><p/> The more we know about the Fourth Gospel the more precious it becomes. For seventy years John had thought of Jesus. Day by day the Holy Spirit had opened out to him the meaning of what Jesus said. So when John was near the century of life and his days were numbered, he and his friends sat down to remember. John the elder held the pen to write for his master, John the apostle; and the last of the apostles set down, not only what he had heard Jesus say, but also what he now knew Jesus had meant. He remembered how Jesus had said: "I have yet many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. When the Spirit of Truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth" (<a href='B:500 16:12-13'>Joh 16:12-13</a>). There were many things which seventy years ago he had not understood; there were many things which in these seventy years the Spirit of Truth had revealed to him. These things John set down even as the eternal glory was dawning upon him. When we read this gospel let us remember that we are reading the gospel which of all the gospels is most the work of the Holy Spirit, speaking to us of the things which Jesus meant, speaking through the mind and memory of John the apostle and by the pen of John the elder. Behind this gospel is the whole church at Ephesus, the whole company of the saints, the last of the apostles, the Holy Spirit, the Risen Christ himself. 


