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Eureka

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

 

 

Chapter 6

Section 1 Subsection 2.4

Of Clerical Expositions


 
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In concluding this section, I remark, that it is not within the scope of this exposition to occupy its pages in stating and examining the multitude of opinions and theories that have been broached by the many and various writers that have preceded me in attempts, all of which have proved futile attempts, at apocalyptical interpretation. To expose their speculative demerits would leave neither time nor space for the exposition of the text; and we should fall into the error of our predecessors, which has been a losing sight of the subject in the fog of their own "ripe scholarship," with which they have confounded and stultified themselves, in demolishing the vain imaginations of their opponents. If A prove B’s position to be untenable, it does not therefore follow that A’s is impregnable. The reader is interested to know, not how many views there are of our grand subject in general and detail, or in what their error consists; but what is its true scriptural and historic import. This "the natural man" can neither unfold, nor " see" when it is explained; for the simple reason that it is "spiritually discerned" (1 Cor. ii. 14). The clergymen and ministers who have mystified themselves and the public by their apocalyptic researches have all signally failed for this cause; not for want of an acquaintance with heathen authors in their original Latin and Greek, proficiency in which is the glory of the natural man; but for want of that spiritual discernment which is anchored to a comprehensive understanding and belief of the truth, as it is in the prophets and apostles. Not having this light within them they cannot "see" that apocalyptic vein of pure gold, which is traceable amid the historic quartz and sands of the "great mountain," which is to become a plain before Zerubbabel. This vein cannot be prospected by any signs extant in the literature and philosophy of the natural man. Volumes of this learned lumber may be read, with the most amusing and curious notes, annotations, and addenda, and after all said, the first scriptural idea fail of having been elicited, as in the Rev. E. B. Elliott’s Horae Apocalypticae. This accomplished "divine" of the Anglican Harlot as by Satan’s law established, whose book is a monument of industry, literary and classical research, and Laodicean foolishness, informs us of the opinions of other "divine" naturals concerning the first four seals, which he rightly rejects as absurd; and then adds thereunto a palpable absurdity of his own. "Hence," says he, "the inadmissibility not merely of such directly antichronological explanations as that of the martyrologist Foxe and Mr. Faber, which interprets the four horses and horsemen of the four successive military empires of Babylon, Persia, Macedon, and Rome, the three first of which had already some centuries before St. John passed away:- but also of such as Dr. Keith’s, which would interpret them to symbolize the four successive religions of Primitive Christianity, Mohammedanism, Popery, and Infidelity; though elsewhere insisting on the establishment of the reign of popery and the popes, as dating near a century before the rise of Mohammedanism." Having disposed of these, and very properly repudiated the notion of the horses signifying the church, he would have us believe that the first four seals in their figuration represent the martial Roman nation and its emperors. On this assumption, he expounds the figuration of the first seal of the Roman people in a happy and prosperous state, ruled by five successive emperors of extraordinary excellence; and characterized as the imperial riders by the Stephanos; and of the Nervan family of Caesars by the bow, the symbol of Nerva the founder of the gens; who sprang originally from Crete, celebrated of old time for the manufacture of bows, which thus became the symbol of the Cretans, and stamped upon their coins! This "crowned bow bearing rider," the Nerva family of emperors, "went forth conquering and to conquer;" "thereby," says Mr. Elliott, "assuring the general inviolability from foreign foes, and perhaps (for the words might seem to intimate as much) advancing the limits and the greatness of the empire" of Rome!

It is said, that there is but one step from the sublime to the ridiculous, and surely here it is. The figuration of the seal is the sublime; but this Elliott "commentary" thereon is certainly the ridiculous. The reader, however, who now has the subject fully before him, must judge for himself according "to the law and the testimony;" for, if we speak not according to this word, it is because there is no light in us. Let him compare, if he will, these diverse and rival expositions; and according to the magnitude and grandeur of the things we have set forth, let him determine of himself, if their fitness be not more nearly allied to the heaven-born things of Deity than the learned and classical elaboration of the Nervan bow, by the antiquarian and excursive ingenuity of the "late Vicar of Tuxford."

 

 

 


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