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Eureka

AN EXPOSITION OF THE APOCALYPSE
Sixth Edition, 1915
By Dr. John Thomas (first edition written 1861)

 

 

Chapter 4

Section 4 Subsection 3

THE LIGHTNINGS AND THUNDERS AND VOICES


 
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"And out of the throne proceed lightnings and thunders and voices; and Seven Lamps of Fire burning before the throne, which are the Seven Spirits of the Deity" (iv. 5).

1. The Lightnings

 

The throne established in the heaven in its inauguration is a throne of judgment; so that when the throne is set, "the judgment is set and the books are opened" (Dan. vii. 10). This throne is "the Great White Throne" seen of John in ch. xx. 11. It is all conquering; for from before the face of him who is to sit upon it, he says, "the earth and the heaven fled away; and there was found no place for them." In other words, the Fourth Beast dominion was destroyed; and the other three beasts had their dominion taken away. At this crisis Daniel describes the throne as being a fiery flame, and the wheels, or hosts that obeyed its mandates, burning fire. He speaks of them as thousand thousands, and ten thousand times ten thousand. These he says, ministered to the King and stood before him; and in their going forth compares them to "a fiery stream issuing and coming forth from before him." The Spirit in David says, "He makes his ministers a flaming fire;" and therefore in this scene of the apocalypse, they are symbolized by "lightnings" with their attendant "thunders and voices." David also says, prophetically: "O Yahweh, bow thine heavens, and come down, touch the mountains, and they will smoke; flash forth lightning, and scatter them; send thine arrows, and discomfit them;" and the Spirit in Zechariah, foretelling the dissipation of the power of the sons of Greece at the advent, says: "I will render double unto thee, when I have bent Judah for me, filled the bow with Ephraim, and raised up thy sons, O Zion, against thy sons, O Greece, and made thee (Zion) as the sword of a Mighty Man. And Yahweh shall be seen over them, and his arrow (Ephraim) shall go forth as the lightning; and Yahweh Elohim shall blow the trumpet, and shall go with whirlwinds of the south" (ix. 13). The teaching of this testimony is, that "in the day of the great slaughter when the towers fall," there will be war between Israel and the rest of the world. That this war will have been kindled by the Messiah after his return. That he will be seen at the head of the armies of Israel, as their Commander, surrounded by the Sons of Zion, whom he will have raised up. He and they will be the captains of Israel, of whom Judah will be the bow, and Ephraim, or the Ten Tribes, his arrow. When this military organization is put into operation, and it goes forth for conquest in "the war of the great day of the Almighty Deity" (Apoc. xvi. 14), it will issue forth as "a fiery stream" from the throne, burning with the fire of the King’s indignation; as lightnings flashing from the throne of David’s Lord and echoing their thunders and voices, from one end of the earth to the other, until "the controversy of Zion" shall be settled beyond all cavil or dispute. "In that day I will make the Governors of Judah as a hearth of fire among the wood, and as a torch of fire in a sheaf; and they shall devour all the peoples round about on the right hand and on the left; and Jerusalem shall be inhabited again in her own place, in Jerusalem" (Zech. xii. 6). These "governors" are the saints in lightning operation against the dominions symbolized by the four beasts of Daniel.

 

 


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