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Eureka

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

 

 

Chapter 11

Section 2 Subsection 3

The "Great City Where our Lord was Crucified"


 
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It was in the plateia, or Breadth, of the GREAT CITY, the witnesses were to be killed and to lie unburied for three days and a half. This is the first place where the phrase, the Great City, occurs in the apocalypse. It is evidently both a city and a country; for it is said to be "called spiritually Sodom and Egypt." The literal Sodom sunk into the abyss in the days of Abraham; it cannot, therefore, be the city of Lot. But, though destroyed, its memorial remains in the Daughters of Sodom. Since its destruction, the city has "spiritually" existed again in Jerusalem, which was "spiritually called Sodom," because of the Sodomitish abominations of her rulers and citizens. They were declared to be "a sinful nation, a people laden with iniquity, a seed of evil doers, children that are corrupters; who had forsaken Yahweh; provoked the Holy One of Israel; and gone away backward," or become apostate: so that "the whole head was sick, and the whole heart faint. From the sole of the" nation’s "foot even unto the head, there was no soundness in it; but wounds and bruises and putrifying sores" (Isa. i. 4-10). Hence, because of this moral likeness to Sodom and Gomorrha, the rulers and people were styled "the rulers of Sodom," and "the people of Gomorrha;" and would have met with the fate of those cities, but for the saving influence of "a very small remnant."

Now Jerusalem as a daughter of Sodom, is illustrative of the moral condition of the Great City in whose breadth the witnesses were slain. It is spiritually called Sodom, because its rulers and people are the moral counterpart of the Jews in their worst condition, upon whom that name was imposed because they were even worse than "the cities of the plain" (Matt. xi. 23,24). There is nothing affirmed by Isaiah of Jerusalem as a spiritual Sodom, which is not literally descriptive of the uncleanness and filth of the Antichristian city and dominion. It is spiritually, or allegorically, styled Sodom, because of its moral likeness thereto, and because, being destitute of even "a very small remnant," the like fate is decreed against it. The original Sodom suddenly went down crashing into hell; so, when the Angel of the Bow, Yahweh Elohim, shall judge the Great City, "as a great millstone cast into the sea," she will go down surging and plunging into her subterranean abyss, and "be found no more at all" (Apoc. xviii. 21).

But, the Great City is also allegorically styled "Egypt". It is the great "House of Bondage" in which Israel after the flesh, and the "very small remnant," not of the city, but trampled in it, "the Israel of the Deity," are sojourning, and waiting for deliverance. It is also spiritual Egypt because of its moral likeness to the literal land of Mitzraim. Its superstition, its ignorance of Yahweh, its hatred and oppression of his people, its hardness of heart, its sorcery, adulteries and murders, its darkness that may be felt -- transcend the infamy of Pharaoh and his hosts in these abominations. The Great City is, therefore, well and truly styled Egypt. But it is also thus allegorized, because the plagues of Egypt await her; and because, the Eternal Spirit will judge her to an overthrow, as terrible and effectual in the judgment as when he judged the Egyptians by the hand of Moses.

This Sodom-and-Egypt territorial arena of Gentilism is the Great City "where also our Lord was crucified." This is indicative of the empire allegorized by "Sodom and Egypt." Christ was crucified by Rome without the walls of Jerusalem. He was, therefore, crucified in a province of the Roman empire; for the Jews then inhabiting Palestine earnestly testified that they had no other king than Caesar (John xix. 15). Hence, the Great City is the empire of Rome, whose frontiers were decreed by Caracalla to be the limits of the city. The empire and city, then, are coextensive; in other words, they are the same. In this Great City, three thousand miles in one direction, and two thousand in another, the personal and mystical Christs were both crucified, or put to death by violence of the Fourth Beast power -- Jesus in Palestine; and the witnesses of Jesus in the plateia, or western breadth thereof -- the special jurisdiction of Antichrist.

In Apoc. xiv. 8, this Great city is styled BABYLON, for a like reason that it is called Sodom and Egypt. It is spiritually styled Babylon; for it is as much a city of confusion as was the original Babylon when the language of mankind was confounded in the days of Nimrod. Its name signifies confusion; and certainly, if ever there was a city in which "confusion worse confounded" was enthroned, "the Great City" is that domain. In Apoc. xviii. 10,21, it is styled, "that Great City Babylon," to be hereafter "divided" under the Seventh Vial "into three parts" (Apoc. xvi. 19). In ch. xvii, this Great City is likened to a Drunken Harlot, gorgeously arrayed, and sitting upon a Scarlet-colored Beast, the symbol of the power over which she reigns (verse 18). Her name is emblazoned in the fifth verse as, "MYSTERY, Babylon the Great, the Mother of Harlots and Abominations of the Earth." She is styled "Mystery," because she is the embodiment of that "Mystery of Iniquity," which Paul says, was working at the time he was writing (2 Thess. ii. 7). Scaliger testifies that "Mystery" was once worn as an inscription on the Pope’s tiara; but afterwards removed by Julius III. The term "Mother," as applied to the Great City in its ecclesiastical relations is recognized by all. As Jerusalem is the Mother of all the Saints; so Rome is the Mother of all their enemies -- "Romana Ecclesia," says the Council of Trent, "quae, omnium Ecclesiarum Mater est et Magistra" -- The Roman Church, which is the MOTHER and MISTRESS of all churches. The Popes themselves seem determined that there shall be no lack of evidence to prove the identity of the ecclesiastical polity of which they are the deified head, with the apocalyptical Great City Babylon. On occasion of the last Jubilee a medal was struck, a copy of which is given in Elliott. It is the size of a quarter of a dollar; on one face, is the effigy of Leo XII; and on the obverse, a Woman, symbolizing the Roman Church, sitting on a globe, with rays of glory on her head, a cross in the left hand, and a cup, signed with a cross in its mouth, in her extended right hand, as if presenting it to be drunk. Beneath her is the date, and around her face the legend "Sedet super Universam. Anno Iubi. MDCCCXXV." -- She sits upon the world. In the year of Jubilee, 1825 -- (Apoc. xvii. 4,15). Yes, she sits upon the world, or "upon many waters," the shameless strumpet of the unmeasured court; and like certain notorious prostitutes of pagan times, bears her ignoble name upon her forehead.*

[* "In allusion," says Bp. Newton, of whose church she is Mother, "to the practice of some notorious prostitutes who had their names written on a label upon their foreheads, as we may collect from ancient authors. Thus Seneca says, Nomen tuum pepenit in fronte: pretia stupri accepisti -- ‘Thy name hath hung upon thy forehead: thou hast received the reward of thy dishonor.’"]

But the Great City is not only spiritually styled Babylon because of the confusion of spiritual speech that obtains among all the "Names and Denominations" of which it is ecclesiastically constituted; but because it is the modern development of the same power that existed in the days of the Chaldean Babylon; whose golden head, for the time being, was the Dynasty of Nebuchadnezzar: and because a similar fate awaits her. It is, I say, the same power, only modified by time and circumstances. I do not say by place as well as by time and circumstances; for, when the Gogue of Ezekiel shall have attained to the full extent of his latter day dominion, much of Babylonia, even more than he now possesses, will be his. He will be, in the full manifestation of his power, the very apex of the Little Horn of the Goat -- the Hellenistic Horn of the Great City, which even now includes the site of Babylon in its domain.

Now, Nebuchadnezzar who was, as it were, the second founder of Babylon, which he had built for the house of the kingdom, by the might of his power, and for the honor of his majesty (Dan. iv. 30), was much interested to know what would be the fate of the kingdom over which he ruled. That he might know the thoughts of his heart (ii. 30) a symbolical representation was presented before him in a dream, illustrative of the general fortunes and consummation, of the kingdom of Babylon "in the latter days." Hence, the kingdom of Babylon has been in continuous existence from his reign until now, for we are now living "in the latter days." It is true, that "the House of the kingdom" has not always been the Babylon, which was the beginning of Nimrod’s dominion (Gen. x. 10); it has been sometimes at one place, sometimes at another, until at length Rome became "the House" of the Great City. Various dynasties have become the inheritors of the kingdom of Babylon. After Nebuchadnezzar’s, there was the silver dynasty, and the brazen dynasty, and the iron dynasty, and the clay dynasty -- five dynasties ruling over one and the same kingdom; called also, "THE KINGDOM OF MEN" (Dan. iv. 17). This Babylonish kingdom in its latter-day manifestation, the Spirit styles apocalyptically, "that Great City Babylon;" and is the arena upon which will stand erect and complete in all its parts the entire Image, which, in these latter days, is to be smitten by THE STONE, or Angel of the Rainbow.

Now, a similar fate awaits the Roman House that in the days of Belshatzar befel the Chaldean House of this same kingdom of men. The Median father Darius, and his political son, but fleshly nephew, and Yahweh’s Messiah and Shepherd -- Cyrus the Persian, besieged the Shinar House. He dried up "the great river Euphrates" from the city; and marching their "sanctified ones" along its bed, captured the House of the Kingdom, and slew Lucifer, the Son of the Morning, with the sword (Isa. xiii. 3,17; xiv. 12; xliv. 28; xlv. l; Dan. v. 30). But in these things that were transacted against the original Babylon, there was a mystery. Cyrus, whose Hebrew name !Hebrew! Choresh, which is a contraction of !Hebrew! Chayaraish, and signifies Like the Heir, was, as his name was intended to express, the type of Christ in the execution of his mission against "the Great City Babylon" of the latter days. Yahweh’s sanctified ones, the Medes and Persians, under Cyrus, were also typical of the saints, who with Christ Jesus "the Heir of all things," and "joint heirs with him," at the head of the armies of Israel, are to enter the Great City when "the great river Euphrates," in a political sense, shall be sufficiently "dried up" to admit of their passage through into the Roman House of the kingdom of men, in which they will slay the Papal Lucifer -- "the Beast and the False Prophet" -- the Little Horn that has Eyes and a Mouth speaking great things and blasphemies. The great river Euphrates, which flows into the Great City, has dried up greatly; that the way of these kings from the Sun’s risings, may be prepared -- the power of the fourth, or Ottoman, angel is now only nominal; and the Gallic Frogs have well-nigh performed their mission: what, then, remains, but that Yahweh whom we seek should suddenly come to his temple, even the Messenger of the Covenant whom we delight in? (Apoc. xvi. 12-15; Mal. iii. 1) and having broken, as a thief, into the strong man’s domain, bind him with chains and cause Babylon to fall, no more again to rise and curse the world with her cruelty and deceit.

Thus did the Spirit select three of the most infamous centres of iniquity among the ancients by which to allegorize the Great City, upon the arena of which has been developed and matured the great Greek, Latin, and Protestant apostasy. It is "spiritually," or figuratively, called by these names, Sodom, Egypt, and Babylon, because of its striking resemblance to them in their beastiality, superstition, blasphemy, oppression of God’s people, and fate. Hence in Sodom, in Egypt, and in the Great City Babylon, "our Lord was crucified;" not in his own person only, but in that also of his witnesses; for what is done unto the least of his brethren, is done also unto him (Matt. xxv. 40); therefore in crucifying, or putting them to death, after their testimony was finished, he was again crucified with them in the Great City, they having been massacred in the noble service of witnessing for him against the deified usurper of his sovereignty and rights.

 

 

 

 


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