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Eureka

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

 

 

Chapter 15

Section 9

The Nave Filled with Smoke

 


 
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"And the Nave was full of smoke from the glory of the Deity, and from his power".

The Nave, or Most Holy Place, of the Mosaic Tabernacle, which was "the figure of the true," "which the Lord pitches, and not man" (Heb. 9:24; 8:2), was the enclosure containing the Ark of the Testimony, the Cherubim, and the smoking and flaming Glory of the Deity. In the true Holies which the Lord pitches, similar arrangements obtain. The tabernacle Moses erected was built of wood, curtains, gold, and so forth; but the building the Lord erects is raised up of living and enlightened beings, created in his own image, and after his own intellectual and moral likeness (1 Cor. 3:9,16; Eph .2:20,22; Heb. 3:2). These are the heavenlies in Christ" (Eph. 1:3)). The first is the heavenly, or the holy body, consisting of "the faithful in Christ Jesus," in the times preceding the advent of the Ancient of Days. The second is the most holy heavenly body, constituted of all who shall be accounted worthy to pass through the Vail, into incorruptibility and deathlessness; by being clothed upon with the "fine linen pure and bright;" and girded around the breast with the "golden girdle". Thus, we have the ONE BOD in two states - as it is before the Ancient of Days comes; and as it will be after that appearing.

In the One Body as it will be are the Four Cherubic Living Ones, and the glory and power of the Deity. The body in its Nave, or Most Holy, constitution, is the Deity in Manifestation; "the Living One for the Aions of the Aions" - verse 7; from whom the wrath of the seven vials issues forth to its consummation. This Divine and glorified body is "full of smoke", because it is full of burning anger and indignation; and its breath like a stream of brimstone in fiery conflagration (Isaiah 30:27,33). Its feet are as "pillars of fire;" its wrath smokes unappeasably until everything is destroyed that would obstruct, or hinder the development of the purpose of the Eternal Power; which is, "to gather together under one head," the Christ, all "principalities, authorities, powers, and lordships," "the things in the heavens;" and all peoples and nations and languages, "things upon the earth" (Eph. 1:9,10; Dan. 7:14,27). Where smoke is, there is fire; and in the case before us, the fire that burns with indignation is in the Seven Spirits, or glory and almighty power of the Deity, with which the One Body is girded around the breast with a golden girdle (ch. 1:13). The Nave is full of smoke till the wrath of the Seven Vials is all exhausted. The Nave at the present time is invisible. The Eternal Father, the Seven Spirits of Deity and the Anointed Jesus, are the present known constituents of the Most Holy. When the veil of the flesh, which now obtains between the Nave, and the Tabernacle of faithful mortals, shall be done away, "the approved" will enter into the Most Holy, and be incorporated with it. By this its bulk, but not its power or glory, will be increased. The agents will be multiplied, through whom the burning wrath will be made to smoke. But, until the admission of "the approved" to incorporation with the Most Holy Nave, its smoke is made to fume through other agents.

The language of him who was anointed the Holy of Holies (Dan. 9:24) is, "All power in heaven and upon earth hath been given to me" (Matt. 28:18); and, referring to his departure from the earth, he said to his apostles and disciples, "I go to prepare a place for you; and if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again" (John 14:2,3). Some seventy years after this declaration, the ETERNAL FATHER, who had bestowed upon him universal power, revealed to him the scheme of its progressive development whereby the "place" promised should be "prepared". This scheme is THE APOCALYPSE (ch. 1:1), the developments of which, till the Holy of Holies comes again, are all manifestations of Divine power through "the Powers that be". The supervisor, director and developer of this power is the Lord Jesus Christ, "he that liveth and was dead, and is living for the Aions of the Aions" - and is therefore now "the Lord the Spirit". He stirred up Alaric, Attila, Genseric, and Odoacer; and girded them for their mission against the earth, the sea, the rivers, and fountains of waters, and the sun, moon, and stars, of the western Roman Catholic world. He caused the Byzantine, or Eastern Roman dominion, to pass from the degenerate Greeks to the more vigorous, and less superstitious and blasphemous, Ottomans. He raised his witnesses from political death, and placed them in the heaven, where they demolished the Bourbon kingdom; and, as the earnest of what is coming upon a grander scale, abolished the superstition and dominion of the Papacy in France. Having punished the royal family, nobility, priests and people of France by the Terrorists, for putting his witnesses to death, he commenced the outpouring of the Seven Golden Vials of Divine wrath. He girded the French with power to give the worshippers of the beast "blood to drink," to "scorch them with fire", and to fill the Papal Kingdom with darkness; and so manifest was this, that the first Napoleon could say, "the hand of God leads my armies". None could successfully withstand them till their mission was accomplished. While they were in full career upon the Continent of Europe, he made the British power invincible upon the sea; so that "it became as the blood of a corpse". All these things did the Lord Jesus Christ by his subordinate powers; so that, upon the principle that what one doth by his agents he doth by himself, he being the Most Holy or Nave, the Seven Angels or Spirits went forth from him "to pour out the vials of the wrath of Deity upon the earth". This they continue to do through "the powers that be," until the time arrives for him to reap in person; and to visit all the powers with a retribution that shall abolish them from the earth. His personal executive intervention changes the situation. The powers that be, instead of being executors of wrath upon one another in their wars, are all equally exposed to judgment by a new and Divine power marvelously set up in their midst. The Nave will then have been transferred from the heavens in which it has long been concealed from human ken, to Mount Zion, where it appears as the "Perfect Man," having attained to "the measure of the Angel" (ch. 21:17; Eph. 4:13). Henceforth, the Seven Spirits go forth with this Man who has been clothed and girded goldenly by them. His voice is then as the sound of many waters, his eyes as a flame of fire, and his feet like brass glowing in a furnace. Such is the almighty power that Smokes with indignation unappeasable, to the end of the "thousand six hundred furlongs;" which marks the end of the Seven-Vial period and of the "great and marvellous sign in the heaven". When the indignation ceases in the annihilation of the temporal and spiritual "powers that be," and in the submission of the peoples and languages, and nations to Christ and his Brethren, the Seven Angels will have accomplished their mission; and the smoke from the glory and power of the Deity will cease to ascend. The tormenting exercise of power by the Holy Angels and the Lamb will no longer maintain the combustion of the fiery lake; and the tumult of the world will subside into the undisturbed tranquillity of the Aions of the Aions-the Day of Christ, in which the place prepared will be inherited by the "blessed".

 

 


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