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Eureka

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

 

 

Chapter 5

Section 1

GENERAL REMARKS


 
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In the previous chapter is exhibited "the manifestation of the Sons of the Deity" in the presence of the Eternal Creator, subsequently, of course, to the resurrection of the saints. "The adoption, to wit, the redemption of the Body" from the power of the grave is accomplished; and the time is come for them to execute the judgment given them, and to take the kingdom and possess it under the whole heaven. The chapter represents them as prepared for action, "according to the energy whereby" He who sitteth upon the throne, "is able to subdue all things to himself." They have joyfully acknowledged his lordship themselves, and cast their coronal wreaths before Him in recognition of the Sovereign Power whence they were derived; and they declare that He is worthy of universal glory, honor, and power, which it is their mission, as the embodiment of the Seven Spirits, to establish in all the earth. "Worthy art thou, O Lord, to receive the glory, and the honor, and the power; because thou createdst all things, and on account of thy will they exist, and were created."

But after what course, or successive development of things among the nations, is such an extraordinary consummation to be accomplished? "As I live," saith Yahweh, "the whole earth shall be full of my glory." "It shall cover the earth as the waters cover the sea." True, O Lord; but how shall it be effected; in what sequence of events; and by whom? In the time of the Apostle John this was a matter of great interest. In his day the saints were engaged in a severe and perilous conflict with Caesar, who had learned sufficient of their doctrine to know that the Pagan or any other human constitution of the world was incapable of contemporaneous existence with the kingdom proclaimed and longed for by the saints. But, though Caesar made war upon them they were not to avenge themselves; how, then, could the kingdom promised them be established? How could a door be opened in the heaven, and the throne of their kingdom be established there to the entire exclusion of Caesar and his representatives? Would it be consequent upon and coeval with the downfall of paganism? Or would it be many ages after that event? And, whenever the time came, by what means will the Eloah of the heavens set up the kingdom, and break in pieces the government of the nations? These were questions "the servants of the Deity" needed light upon. They had the prophets, it is true; and among these Daniel especially: but still there were mysteries "sealed up and closed" in their writings which required information not yet extant to make them intelligible. Daniel "heard, but understood not," neither did any of his contemporaries (xii. 8; viii. 27). Nor should we err if we were to say that this state of mind was characteristic of all the saints previous to the giving of this revelation, styled the Apocalypse, to Jesus Anointed. They "none of them understood" the development of the mystery the Deity had declared to his servants the prophets (Apoc. x. 7). Nor need we be surprised at this when we consider that even after the mystery was solved by revelation, multitudes existed in and near John’s time who had to confess that they could not comprehend the exposition of the enigma. They needed one to expound the exposition. Among these was Dionysius, styled by Eusebius the ecclesiastical historian contemporary with Constantine, "the great bishop of Alexandria." He flourished in the middle of the third century as an opponent of the thousand years’ reign of Christ upon earth with his saints after their resurrection, which was ignorantly and maliciously ascribed to one Cerinthus, contemporary with the Apostle John, as its inventor. But Daniel taught the doctrine nearly seven hundred years before Cerinthus was heard of, as may be seen in the Apocalypse as contracted in his seventh chapter. Cerinthus may have grafted upon it some foolishness of his own; but of the doctrine itself he was no more the inventor than the Pope of Rome.

There are two works ascribed to Dionysius "On the Promises." They were written to oppose the idea that the promises given to holy men in the scriptures should be understood more as the Jews understood them, and that there would be a thousand years of delights on the earth. This position was taken up by a bishop in Egypt named Nepos, who wrote a book in defense of it, and styled it "Refutation of the Allegorists." Dionysius being an allegorist, warmly opposed Nepos in his work "On the Promises." In one of his works he thus speaks of Nepos: "They produce," says he, "a certain work of Nepos, upon which they lay great stress, as if he advanced things that are irrefragable when he asserts that there will be an earthly reign of Christ. In many other respects I accord with and greatly love Nepos, both on account of his faith and industry, and his great study in the scriptures; as also for his great attention to psalmody, by which many are still delighted. I greatly reverence the man also for the manner in which he has departed this life. But the truth is to be loved and honored before all. It is just, indeed, that we should applaud and approve whatever is said aright, but it is also a duty to examine and correct whatever may not appear to be written with sufficient soundness. If, indeed, he were present, and were advancing his sentiments orally, it would be sufficient to discuss the subject without writing, and to convince and confute the opponents by question and answer. But as the work is published, and as it appears to some, is calculated to convince, and there are some teachers who say that the law and the prophets are of no value, and who give up following the gospels and who depreciate the epistles of the apostles, and who at the same time announce the doctrine of this work as a great and hidden mystery, and who also do not allow that our brethren (the Allegorists) have any sublime and great conception, either of the glorious and truly divine appearance of our Lord, nor of our own resurrection, and our being gathered and assimilated to him, but persuade them to expect what is little and perishable, and such a state of things as now exists in the kingdom of God; it becomes necessary for us, also, to reason with our brother Nepos as if he were present."

It would seem from this, that while Dionysius, the allegorist, was a specimen of a modern clergyman, or priest, affirming some good things about truth, while he was entirely mistaken concerning "the truth," there were, also, other clergymen who might be designated as "Millennarians." These rightly believed that Christ will reign upon earth a thousand years with the saints, and with Jerusalem restored for the capital of his kingdom; but with this truth they blended errors that nullified it, and which are now constituents of the clerical orthodoxy of the nineteenth century. They regarded the law and the prophets as valueless, and thought but little of the epistles of the Apostles. This is practically characteristic of the clergy and their flocks; and the consequence is, that they, like the "great Bishop of Alexandria," in Egypt, and the Millennarians and Allegorists of his time, are incapable of understanding the apocalyptic expositions of Daniel and the prophets. Practically, they ignore the scriptures of the prophets and apostles, while with their lips they bestow upon them "faint praise;" and find it profitable to maintain the machinery by which they are circulated. This may be verified by any intelligent believer acquainted with "the churches;" gross scriptural ignorance being characteristic of them all. No wonder, then, that though "the sayings of the prophecy of the Apocalypse are not sealed" (xxii. 10) -- it should be sealed, and therefore unintelligible to them. The truth of the matter they call "little and perishable;" and absurdly suppose that the Millennial reality expounded by Chiliasts is expected to be "such a state of things as now exists in" what they call "the kingdom of God," that is, in "Christendom." But the reason of this their folly is, that the things revealed by the Deity are not in conformity with "the thinking of the flesh." That which the Old Adam terms grand and sublime, is not truly so. The sublimity and greatness of his conceptions in relation to "the deep things of God," are mere foolishness. Dionysius and his brethren were of "the Synagogue of the Satan," "Jezebel and her children," who held the doctrine of Balaam, and taught "the depths of the Satan;" by which they were industriously developing the Laodicean Apostasy, which, in the reign of Constantine the First, became the religion of Satan’s Kingdom, and continues such until this day. The Old Adam’s foolishness was, therefore, especially theirs. Hence, the charge of their Millennarian contemporaries is perfectly just, that the Allegorists "have no sublime and great conception either of the glorious and truly divine appearance of our Lord, nor of our own resurrection, and of our being gathered, and assimilated to him."

In proof of how greatly Jezebel’s children were puzzled by the Apocalypse within a hundred and fifty years after its publication -- how utterly incapable they were in any sense "to see it" -- I will still quote from "the great Bishop of Alexandria." "Some, indeed, before us," says he, "have set aside, and have attempted to refute the whole book, criticising every chapter, and pronouncing it without sense, and without reason," that is, totally opposed to the thinking of the flesh, or to the sense and reason of minds destitute of the truth. "They say," continues Dionysius, "it has a false title, for it is not of John. Nay, that it is not even a revelation, as it is covered with such a dense and thick veil of ignorance, that not one of the Apostles, and not one of the holy men, or those of the Church, could be its author." It will not be difficult for one of "servants of the Deity" to discern to what class of professors these critics belonged, and the true cause of their denunciation of the Apocalypse. It condemned them as "evil," as "liars," as false apostles, as Nikolaitanes, as spurious Jews of the Satan’s synagogue, as the children of Jezebel, and so forth. They had sense and reason enough to recognize themselves as of the class repudiated under these terms in the apocalyptic epistles. They were conscious that they "held the doctrine of Balaam," and "the doctrine of the Nikolaitanes," and hence, their bitter enmity and contempt for the whole book which exposed them, and all of their class in all ages and generations, to the reprobation of all truly good and Christian men. They tried to persuade their contemporaries who professed christianity, that it ought not to be recognized as canonical: that it was no revelation from the Deity; and that consequently, pious, God-fearing people should not perplex their minds in the vain endeavor to understand it. Whatever its author might mean, was inscrutable, being imbedded "in such a dense and thick veil of ignorance." No doubt, there was such a veil between its meaning and their comprehension of it; but the fog was that which beclouded their own brains, and arose from the vain imaginations and traditions of their evil hearts. Mankind are prone to evil, and to the reception of foolishness rather than the truth. This has been characteristic of all generations since the original transgression in Eden. It was pre-eminently so of the generations immediately succeeding the delivery of the Apocalypse to John. The Nikolaitanes and children of Jezebel, whose representatives in our generation are the "Holy Orders of the Ministry," the Spirituals of Modern Christendom, at length succeeded in persuading their dupes that they ought not to trouble themselves with the study of the Apocalypse, for that it was utterly unintelligible, or could not be seen; and calculated only to dethrone all sense and reason. The impression they made was deep and lasting. Repudiation of apocalyptic studies became a principal of "orthodoxy" in all succeeding generations, until in our own, a man’s sanity is suspected if he is known earnestly to devote himself to the work of unfolding the mystery set forth, or revealed, in the symbols it contains.

But they were not content with simply denying the divine authorship of the book. They proceeded to justify the character assigned them in the Apocalypse by falsely ascribing it to one Cerinthus; who if he ever existed, is said, like many in our day, to have held some very absurd opinions in connection with the Divine truth of Christ’s reign on earth. "Cerinthus," say they, "the founder of the sect of Cerinthians, so called from him, wishing to have reputable authority for his own fiction, prefixed the title. For this is the doctrine of Cerinthus, that there will be an earthly reign of Christ." In this he was perfectly correct. "And," continued they, "as he was a lover of the body; and altogether sensual in those things which he so eagerly craved, he dreamed that he would revel in the gratification of the sensual appetite, i.e. in eating, and drinking, and marrying." Whether he really held these opinions it is impossible to tell. His enemies say so; and these enemies have had the ear of the world to the exclusion of all testimony but their own. To the class denounced in the Apocalyptic epistles have belonged all the ecclesiastical historians through whom has come to us the meagre and insipid accounts of what they unscripturally style "the church." All not of the Laodicean Apostasy, they have proscribed and denounced as "heretics;" and where they could not procure the suppression of these by force, they have sought to hold them up to the reprobation and contempt of their contemporaries and posterity by "saying all manner of evil of them falsely for Christ’s sake," as he foretold they would (Matt. v. 11). I know experimentally that this is the policy of professors and their spiritual guides of this nineteenth century generation. They affirm certain ridiculous falsehoods, and say I teach them. They do not care to inform themselves of the truth of the matter, which would be inconvenient, and might not answer their purpose. So it may have been in the case of Cerinthus. He may not have held the opinions attributed to him; or he might. But, if even he did, his errors did not change the truth of the Deity. He has decreed the reign of His king on Zion, the hill of His holiness, and it will assuredly come to pass, in spite of all the errors assigned to Cerinthus and others who believe it, concerning the nature and character of that reign.

Cerinthus was perfectly scriptural if he affirmed that there would be eating and drinking in the kingdom of the Deity. It is, however, difficult to believe that he taught that there would be marrying, in view of the saying of Israel’s King, that they who attain to the resurrection and the kingdom "neither marry, nor are given in marriage; but are as the angels of the Deity." As to eating and drinking, this is as plainly taught by Christ, who not only ate with his apostles after his own resurrection, but promised them, saying, "ye shall eat and drink at my table in my kingdom, and sit on thrones judging the twelve tribes of Israel;" and again he said, "I will no more drink of the fruit of the vine until that day that I drink it new in the kingdom of the Deity" (Luke xxii. 30; Mark xiv. 25). The enemies of Cerinthus did not believe this; but denounced it as sensuality, and in so doing, thought themselves wonderfully spiritual! They said that to give the eating and drinking "a milder aspect and expression," he taught that it would be "in festivals and sacrifices, and the slaying of victims," the sensual appetite of the redeemed would be gratified. Against this "milder aspect and expression," they exclaimed as loudly as our own clerical contemporaries and their disciples; for according to their system of superstition, they can discern no place in the kingdom, whether on earth or in heaven, for eating and drinking sacrificially or in any other way. I perceive, plainly, in these charges brought against Cerinthus the great and rapid progress the apostasy Paul predicted had made within a short time after the apocalypse was revealed. Nay, even while he wrote the prediction, the Allegorists were actively engaged in the work of superseding the real, literal, and true, by the fictitious and imaginary, which they call the "spiritual," or allegorical, until now at length, everything is resolved into feeling and impressions, and the testimony of the Deity by prophets and apostles is practically ignored. A professor "feels good," and therefore he is good; he "feels that a thing is true," and therefore it is true; he "feels that it is false," and therefore it is false! With hearts full of such enlightened feelings as this; and with heads unfurnished with the divine testimony, we have the professor of the Laodicean Apostasy who has flourished in all the odor of sanctity, and orthodox contempt for the reign of Christ on earth, characteristic of the zealots in all "the times of the Gentiles." In their systems of fleshly pietism they have no place for the priesthood of the saints; nor for the temple, and festivals, and sacrifices of Ezekiel’s testimony. All is figurative or allegorical; and nothing real remains but to save souls from eternal torment, and when the number of the elect is completed, to make a bonfire of terrestrial creation! Well might it be said of the allegorists, that "they have no sublime and great conception, either of the glorious and truly divine appearance of our Lord, nor of the resurrection, and the gathering, and assimilation to him."

But to return to Dionysius and the Apocalypse. He could not, it would seem, go as far as some of his predecessors and contemporaries in a total repudiation of the book. "For my part," says he, "I would not venture to set this book aside, as there are many brethren who value it much; but having formed a conception of its subject as exceeding my capacity, I consider it also containing a certain concealed and wonderful intimation in each particular. For though I do not understand, yet I suspect that some deeper sense is enveloped in the words, and these I do not measure and judge by my private reason; but allowing more to faith, I have regarded them as too lofty to be comprehended by me, and those things which I do not understand, I do not reject, but I wonder the more that I cannot comprehend." This was a candid admission on the part of Dionysius, that he could "not see it." He showed a better sense than many in not venturing to set it aside, because he could not see it. Inability to see it disqualifies the reader for enlightened criticism. If he were able to see the apocalyptic scroll, he would discern knowledge and wisdom pervading it, which "no one in the heaven, nor upon the earth, nor under the earth" could have originated but the Deity who gave it to Jesus Christ. The proof of the divine authorship of the book is in this. I would, therefore, advise the reader to study it that he may be "able to see it" -- to understand it. "Many brethren" in the days of Dionysius "valued it much," though he could make nothing of it. They valued it, doubtless, because they understood it, not that they could have expounded all its details; but keeping in mind "the gospel of the kingdom," the nature of that kingdom, and the great mystery of godliness, in the manifestation of the sons of the Deity, they saw into the general import of this wonderful book, and secured the blessing promised to him that knows accurately, and gives heed to its words, and observes narrowly the things it contains.

Let us, then, proceed under the enlightened conviction, that though there is no help to be expected from "the great bishops" of the Gentiles, babes in Christ may come to see the apocalypse intellectually if they approach the subject in a teachable spirit, and from a right direction. I proceed then to remark, that while the fourth chapter introduces us to "the hour of judgment" -- to the epoch when the door had been violently opened in the heaven, and a throne set up there, the fifth chapter shows that universal dominion over the earth shall be to him who unrolls the scroll and looses the seven seals. The consummation of this chapter is coeval with the end of the seventh seal, the seventh trumpet, the seventh vial, and the seven thunders. The opening of the door in the heaven never to be closed again, marks the first minute of the judgment hour; and the ascription of blessing, honor, glory, and power to the Lamb by every created thing in verse 13, marks the last moment of the same hour in which the wrath of the Deity against the nations is entirely exhausted. This "hour" is a period of thirty years, in which the process of loosing, or finishing the loosing of the seventh seal is being completed. The seven seals are to establish the kingdom of David’s house "for the Aions of the Aions." The chapter does not describe what is, but prophesies what shall be hereafter. It reveals that the personage is provided to whom is assigned the honor and glory of accomplishing the work termed the unrolling the scroll and the loosing of the seven seals; and no one can mistake him. In verse 12, he is declared by the saints and angels to be "worthy to receive" whatever is decreed. At this point it is not possessed; because the power and the glory are in the hands of "the powers that be," who are hostile to his claims; and "shall make war with him," to prevent him from obtaining what the "ten thousand of ten thousands and thousands of thousands" proclaim him worthy of (Apoc. xvii. 14). "But he shall overcome them; for he is Lord of lords and King of kings: and they that are with him" in his wars, that is, the saints, "are the called, and chosen, and faithful" -- the 144,000, who follow him whithersoever he goeth (xiv. 1-4). The result of this conquest is declared in verse 13, of the fifth chapter, which testifies, that every creature acquiesces in his receiving everything of which his brethren the saints and the angels of the Deity announce him to be worthy. All power, riches, strength, honor, glory, and blessing become his, and all nations find the blessedness of the gospel preached to Abraham come upon them, and established for the thousand years. A most unexpected result to them all; but one looked and longed for by those represented by the four living ones, and the twenty four elders; who, both in their mortal state before resurrection, and as resurrected and prepared for action, exclaim, "So let it be!"

 

 


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