angels having the last plagues; for in them is filled up the wrath of God. And I saw as it were a glassy sea," mixed with fire; and those that were victors over the Beast, and his image, and the number of his name, standing on (or by)3 the glassy sea, having harps of God. And they sing the song of Moses the servant of God, and the song of the Lamb: saying, Great and wonderful are thy works, O Lord God Almighty: true and just are thy ways, thou King of the nations: who shall not fear thee, O Lord, and glorify thy name? For thou only art holy for all the nations shall come, and shall worship before thee: for thy judgments have been made manifest. And after these things I beheld, and the temple of the tabernacle of the testimony in heaven was opened. And the seven angels went forth that had the seven plagues. And the temple was filled with smoke from the glory of the Lord." Apoc. xv. 1-6. § 1. THE TRIPLE prefiguraTIONS RESPECTING Such are the three passages which prefigured the continuance, state, and actings of Christ's true Church and servants during the period of the seventh Trumpet: for it was not possible, with God's own assured safeguard round them, that these should fail or be destroyed during its judgments, any more than during the Beast's 1260 years before it. Their mutual chronological parallelism, as all alike connected with the seventh Trumpet, has been already briefly shown in my Introductory Remarks prefixed to this vth Part and the general intent of the words and symbols in the two former of them seems (as also before briefly noted) sufficiently clear. It is only the third that need cause us any considerable doubt or difficulty. 1 ὡς θάλασσαν ὑαλινην ̇ not ὑαλε, of glass. 2 της νικώντας εκ τε θηρια a phrase observed on afterwards. 3 επι την θαλασσαν observed on afterwards. 4e0vwv. So the MSS of highest authority, not åyiwv. Let us then glance briefly at the two first; then pause in more lengthened consideration on the third and last. I. In the one then first cited we read that, on the seventh Trumpet's sounding, voices loud and joyful were heard by St John in heaven, (the firmamental political heaven apparently,)' anticipating the establishment of Christ's kingdom on earth, as even then near its accomplishment also that thereupon the very significant figuration was enacted before him of the temple (the same out of which St. John himself, in his representative character, had a little before ejected the outer-court worshippers as heathens) opening wide its entrance-gates ; just as if in invitation of, and preparation for, the entrance of worshippers: the ark of the covenant within becoming at the same time an object generally recognizable from without on the Apocalyptic scene. symbol this which (as before said) 3 seems only explicable of the fact of the Reformed Protestant Church opening wide its gates, so as never before, in invitation to the multitudes without its pale; and with signs concomitant very striking and manifest of God's truth and presence resting within it, at once its characteristic and its defence.* 2 A II. Then, turning to the second passage in Apoc. xiv. 6, 7, its figuration did but extend and illustrate that contained in the first. It occurred, as we have seen, in the supplementary series, without written; but the statement made in it, of "the hour of God's judgment having come," identified its chronology with that of the seventh Trumpet's sounding: 5-a chronology affixed to it more 1 See p. 284, Note, suprà. 2 St. John himself seems always to have been in sight of the ark. 3 See Note 1, p. 287, and also p. 407, suprà. , P. 287. 4 See Notes 2, 3, I have observed in the Note 3 referred to, that the manifestation of God's glory covering the tabernacle was in defence of his servants Moses and Aaron, as well as in judgment against their enemies -Compare Isa. iv. 5: "The Lord will create on every dwelling-place of Mount Zion, and upon her assemblies, a cloud and smoke by day, and the shining of a flaming fire by night for upon all the glory shall be a defence." 5 See p. 278. over by its very position in the prophecy; placed as it was between, on the one hand, the notice of the insulation in spirit of the Lamb's true Church of the 144,000, even after the loud symphony of princes and people with it in the new song of the Reformation,' and on the other, the vision of the second flying Angel, announcing the immediately impending fall of the Apocalyptic Babylon." And what its figuration? It was that of an Angel flying through mid-heaven, having the everlasting gospel to preach both to them that dwelt on the Apocalyptic earth, and to every nation, and kindred, and tongue, and people; a symbolic vision of which the intent seems abundantly too plain to be mistaken. It symbolized surely some remarkable æra of evangelic missions and gospel-preaching. Not one, observe, of missions and preaching of merely so called Christian doctrine, but of the real gospel:-the absence of the Article in the original before the word evayyento indicating perhaps that it was an actual Book of the gospel,3 or New Testament, that the Angel bore in hand to preach; and the epithet everlasting, its having been preserved by Providence through all the darkness, irreligion, and hostility of past ages. Not one, observe again, of gospel-preaching confined, so as was the commission before given to St. John, when figuring the leaders of the Reformation in his symbolic character, "Thou must prophecy before many kings and nations; "4 but one universal, to "every nation and kindred and tongue and people under heaven:" the Angel's flying on the commission, indicating further probably its rapid accomplishment. As to the tenor of the visionary Angel's address, it signified a mixture in the prefigured preaching of solemn warning and appeal, with the persuasions and invitations of the gospel; as in reference not only to the fact of God's judgments being on the earth, 1 Apoc. xiv. 3. See my Chapter x, Part iv, suprà Apoc. xiv. 8. 3 Bishop Middleton ad loc. remarks that our translators, in saying lasting Gospel," have said more than the original; which is simply exorta ευαγγέλιον αιωνιον. Compare the inarthrous use of βιβλιον, when signifying a volume, Luke iv. 17 ; επεδόθη αυτῳ βιβλιον Ησαις τε προφητε: also 2 Kings xxii. 8; βιβλιον το νομο ευρον εν οικῳ Κυριθ. And so too βιβλιαριδιον, Αpoc. 4 Apoc. x. 11. See my Vol. ii. p. 171. x. 2. but to that also of the time of heathen ignorance that God winked at having passed away, and of his now at length entering into controversy with the nations.'-So was the whole vision one in strictest harmony with, and most illustrative of, the emblematic vision of the opened temple previously exhibited; for it was a voice telling that God's gospel-church was open to them, and urging all to enter. III. There remains to be considered the third figuration in the extracts at the head of the present Chapter : -a figuration with which the Apocalyptic series within written, on resuming its interrupted symbolization of the seventh Trumpet's development and the temple's opening in heaven, recommences. And here I must at once confess, that while enough seems clear to show the harmony with the two other figurations of the view that it presents of the feelings and actings of God's faithful ones, (antithetically to the Beast's adherents,) during the progress of the outpouring of the seventh Trumpet's seven vials, yet in one of the details, and this too one among the most prominent, there appears to me so much of ambiguity that I feel constrained to offer a double solution. The analysis of a vision that involves such difficulties must be made of course with double care,2 and will necessarily detain us some little time. "And I saw another sign in heaven, seven angels having the seven last plagues. And I saw as it were a glassy sea mingled with fire, and those that were victors over the Beast and over his image standing on (or by) 1 So Acts xvii. 30; "The times of that ignorance God winked at: but now God commandeth every man everywhere to repent; for He hath appointed a day in which He will judge the world in righteousness:" said on the first preaching of the Gospel to the Gentiles. 2 The rather because many commentators, as it seems to me, have very much frittered away its prophetic meaning and value. I allude both to those interpreters who have explained the harpers of the vision as the separate spirits of the faithful in Paradise, and those who have explained them of the saints translated at Christ's coming ;-which saints indeed, mixing instantly after translation with the risen saints, (1 Thess. iv. 16, 17: 1 Cor. xv. 51, 52,) could scarcely be represented alone, and as a distinct body. Interpreted in either of these ways the vision has no force as a prefiguration and living portraiture of the true Church of God, at the particular time referred to, on the scene of Christendom. 1 the glassy sea, having harps of God. And they sing the song of Moses, the servant of God, and the song of the Lamb: saying, Great and marvellous are thy works," &c.-In this the particulars to be considered are the harpers themselves,-the glassy sea (or that which appeared like one) mixed with fire, -and the song sung by them on (or by) it, viz. "the song of Moses, and the song of the Lamb. 1. With regard then to the harpers, two things are to be observed in the descriptive sketch given.-The first is that they are spoken of, not in the past participle, res VEVINKOтas those that had conquered the Beast, so as our authorized translation has rendered it; but in the present participle, Tas Tas, as if those that were conquering, or the then conquerors in other words faithful and successful opponents of the Beast, alive at the time on the earthly scene of action; and not (as some expositors have explained it 2) the departed spirits in Paradise of such as had been previously faithful in conflict with the Beast, through their several by-gone generations. For though the phrase ὁ νικών, Οι δι νικωντες, in the present participle, is used of victors in the abstract, in general statements made respecting them,3-including those of past time, as well as present and future, and sometimes of antecedent victors distinctively and alone, while the victory is yet recent, and the victors looked on or spoken " "" 1 θαλασσαν ὑαλινην. The authorized rendering a sea of glass," with the substantive, might mislead, as if meant of artificial glass. So Matthew Henry, on Exod. xv. calls it "a sea of glasses: " and Mede too, on Apoc. iv. 6, strangely refers to what is said Exod. xxxviii, 8 of the laver being made of the women's looking-glasses," as explanatory of the Apocalyptic sea of glass: though notoriously, these mirrors were of brass, not vaλos, or glass; and so the laver a brazen laver. 2 E. g. Daubuz, Cuninghame, &c. 3 As by our Lord in speaking of the rewards laid up for saints that continued faithful unto death; Τῳ νικωντι δωσω αυτῳ φαγείν εκ τε ξυλο της ζωης Αpoc. ii. 7: and again Apoc. xxi. 7, ‘O viewv kλnpovoμnσei mavтa' where indeed the word, being used of a victory partially begun in life, and to be perfected in death, has very much of a future signification.-In the same general way the phrase is used by Pindar, Olymp. i. 158, &c. Ο νικων δε λοιπον αμφι βιοτον And Euripides Alcestis 1048, Τα κεφα τοις νικωσι &c. |