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Eureka

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

 

 

Chapter 6

Section 5 Subsection 2

The Altar


 
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John informs us, that when the Lamb opened the fifth seal he saw THE ALTAR and souls underneath it. There are two apocalyptic altars pertaining to the apocalyptic temple -- the thusiasterion of the priest’s court, and of the Holy Place. The one seen by John in this seal was the thusiasterion of the Court of the Priests, where sacrifices were burnt, and the blood thereof poured out at the altar’s base.

A thusiasterion was a structure of earth, unhewn stone, or brass, elevated in an area, upon which the bodies of slain animals were burned. The burned bodies consumed into smoke were whole burnt offerings; and typified, or represented the utter destruction of Sin’s Flesh, which sin had been condemned in the flesh of the victim, by the abstraction therefrom, or the pouring out of the soul of the flesh in the slaughter of the victim. "The soul of the flesh is in the blood." The blood covers upon the soul, or life; therefore in pouring out the blood, the soul, or life, of the animal was poured out unto death; and the blood being poured at the base of the altar, the soul was there, and the altar was considered as covering it; hence the phrase "underneath the altar the souls of the slain." The only difference between soul and blood sacrificially, is blood flowing in the veins and arteries; and blood in the sacrificial bowl. In the latter, it is a coagulated mass unfit for the purpose of the body; in the former, it is a fluid maintained in fluidity by the electro-nervous, or vital, energy generated by the processes of digestion and respiration. When the blood is shed it soon loses its fluidity. The electro-nervous energy, soul, or life evaporates, and the blood becomes solid, or concrete. It is physiologically decorous, therefore, in hieroglyphic writing to make a distinction between soul and blood, and to give the intellectuality of the scene to the soul, as in the fifth seal.

In patriarchal and Mosaic times, when things instituted possessed a typical significance, altars were designated by divine and highly expressive titles. In Gen. xxxiii. 18-20, we learn that Jacob erected one at Shalem, and called it AIL-ELOHAI-YISRAAIL -- the Strength of the Mighty Ones of Power’s Prince. As Jacob did not consider the work of his own hands was this STRONG ONE; in its being testified that he called the altar by this name, we are instructed that the prophet (and Jacob was a prophet as well as Abraham and Isaac) erected it as a type, or symbol, of Him the Strength or Power, who promised him such great things with his Seed -- the Mighty Ones of Jacob.

Again, Moses built an altar after the battle with Amalek at Rephidim, and named it, Yahweh-nissi; "and he said, Because his hand is against the throne of Yah, there is war for Yahweh with Amalek from generation to generation" (Exod. xvii. 15). Here, the altar’s name is He shall be my banner. Who shall be? He who shall be the Deity manifested in flesh, the Mighty One of Jacob. He shall be Israel’s Banner against all the Powers that lift the hand against !Hebrew! kais Yah, the throne of Him who shall be; for there shall be war against such till their thrones become the conqueror’s.

But, in the building of altars the will of the Deity was that they should be of earth; or if of stone, that the stone should not be hewn. "An altar of earth thou shall make unto me, and shalt sacrifice thereon thy burnt offerings ...; in all places where I record my name I will come unto thee, and I will bless thee. And if thou wilt make me an altar of stone, thou shalt not build it of hewn stone; for if thou lift up thy tool upon it, thou hast polluted it. Neither shalt thou go up by steps unto mine altar, that thy nakedness be not discovered thereon (Exod. xx. 24). The permanent altar was made of wood, overlaid with brass; and when cleansed, anointed, and sanctified, it was Most Holy; and whatsoever touched it was holy.

Now, all this was significant of the substance, Christ, who was "the end of the law." The Holy Spirit signified something that he regarded important in his system of wisdom, in commanding an altar to be made of earth, or of unhewn stone; and in forbidding a tool to be lifted upon it. The things commanded were "a parabola for the time then present" -- a riddle, the meaning of which would be found in the realities developed in the Christ. He is declared by Paul to be the christian altar. "We have an altar," says he in Heb. xii. 10, which in being cleansed by the blood of Jesus is made identical with him. He was the altar of earth, or of unhewn stone; and in his making, or generation, he was begotten, "not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of the Deity." To affirm, that in his generation he was begotten of Joseph, is to "pollute him." In admitting his altarship, and at the same time affirming his paternity to be of Joseph, and not of the Deity, as related in Luke, is to make Joseph the builder of an altar of hewn stone -- a polluted altar, upon which a man’s nakedness had been discovered.

Jesus being set forth by the Deity a propitiatory for the remission of sins that are passed through faith in his blood (Rom. iii. 25) exhibits him in relation to the believer of the truth as an Altar -- the real Ail elohai-Yisraail and Yahweh-nissi. The Word made Flesh was at once the victim, the altar, and the priest. The Eternal Spirit-Word was the High Priestly Offerer of His own Flesh, whose character was without spot -- "holy, harmless, undefiled, and separate from sinners;" "who knew no sin;" yet whose nature was in all points like ours -- "sin’s flesh," in which dwells no good thing (Heb. ix. 14; vii. 26; 2 Cor. v. 21; Rom. viii. 3; vii. 18; Heb. ii. 14-17). The Flesh made by the spirit out of Mary’s substance, and rightly claimed therefore in Psalm xvi. 8; Acts ii. 31, as His flesh, is the Spirit’s Anointed Altar, cleansed by the blood of that flesh when poured out unto death "on the tree." This flesh was the victim offered -- the sacrifice. Suspended on the tree by the voluntary offering of the Spirit-Word (John x. 18), "sin was condemned in the flesh," when the soul-blood thereof was poured out unto death. The Spirit-Word made his soul thus an offering for sin (Isa. liii. 10); and by it sanctified the Altar-Body on the tree. It was now a thusiasterion -- an Altar Most Holy; and all that touch it are holy; and without touching it none are holy.

This then is the Altar that decorates the Court of the Priests in the temple-system of apocalyptic symbols. It is the mystical Christ-Altar, to the horns of which the sacrifice is bound (Psa. cxviii. 27). The magnitude of this altar is equal to the One Body of which the Lord Jesus is the head; so that all who are "in him" "wait at the altar, and are partakers with the altar," because they "eat of the sacrifice" (1 Cor. ix. 13; x. 17,18): they "eat the flesh of the Son of Man, and drink his blood, which is meat indeed, and drink indeed." This eating and drinking is intellectual. What we read, or hear and understand, and believe, we eat, and digest, and assimilate, and grow thereby. "He that eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood," saith Jesus, "dwelleth in me, and I in him" (John vi. 56). Here is a mutual indwelling between Christ and the believer. When the enlightened believer has got into Christ, he dwelleth in him, and feeds upon his flesh and blood -- he is within the Altar, and partaking with it. He has touched the Most Holy, and is therefore holy, or a saint.

But how doth a sinner get into the Altar so as to be within it, and to be a worshipper therein? (Apoc. xi. 1). The only way is by his "believing the things concerning the kingdom of the Deity, and of the name of the Anointed Jesus;" and, if he believes these things with a "faith that works by love" and "purifies the heart," by being immersed into the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit (Acts viii. 12; Matt. xxviii. 19). In passing through this process, the sinner, who is by nature "dead in trespasses and sins," is quickened by the word understood and believed; word-life, or a new spirit, has entered into him, which is the spirit of a ready and willing obedience to all that is commanded; and the first command for such an enlightened sinner is, "be immersed upon (epi) the name of the Anointed Jesus into (eis) remission of sins." In doing this, his love-working faith is counted to him for repentance and remission of sins, and he is inducted into the Altar. In passing through the water he passes through the Laver to the Altar; and in the passage, he becomes sprinkled in heart by the blood of sprinkling, which is the blood of the Altar-Covenant, through the faith which he has in the doctrine concerning it (Heb. x. 22; xii. 24; 1 Pet. i. 2; ii. 24). Such an one is no longer a sinner because he has touched the Altar; and "whatever toucheth it is holy," or a saint. Now, to saints within the altar the apostle saith, "all sons of Deity are ye in the Anointed Jesus through the faith; for as many as into Christ have been immersed, have put on Christ ... and if ye be Christ’s, then ye are Abraham’s Seed, and heirs according to promise (Gal. iii. 26-29). They are in the Altar-Name. There is a remarkable sentence in one of Ignatius’ epistles, indicative of this subject being better understood in the reign of Trajan, A.D. 107, than contemporary with the fifth seal, or now. "Let no one," says he, "mistake; if any man is not within the Altar, he is deprived of the bread of the Deity;" which is equivalent to saying, if any man be not in Christ -- if Christ be not the covering of his nakedness, he cannot obtain eternal life in the kingdom of God.

From these premises, then, the reader will easily comprehend the phraseology of the fifth seal concerning "souls underneath the Altar." When "the saints and faithful in Christ Jesus," and therefore "within the Altar," die, and return to their parent earth without violence, they are "underneath the Altar," "sleeping in Jesus," "dwelling in the dust," "sleeping in the dust of the earth:" but if they are made to lie "underneath the Altar" by the blood-shedding cruelty of the enemy, their souls are said, as in the language of the fifth seal, to cry with a great or loud voice for judicial vengeance on the murderers, who poured out their soul-blood unto death. Abel’s blood shed by Cain is said to have a voice, and to speak -- "the voice of the bloods of thy brother cry to me from the ground" (Gen. iv. 10); and the blood of Jesus, shed by his brethren of the flesh, "speaks better things than the blood of Abel" speaks. It speaks according to the teaching of the revealed mystery, pardon to the guilty, and life to the pardoned; but the blood of Abel only speaks of vengeance against Cain, not of pardon even to him. Now, if this about Abel had been hieroglyphically represented as in this seal, "the voice of the bloods" would have been styled "the soul of Abel who had been slain, saying, until when dost thou not judge and avenge my blood upon Cain?" John, with the eyes of his understanding enlightened by the Lamb’s messenger, two hundred and five years before the seal, saw the souls of them that had been slain, lying underneath the Altar, and heard their great voice. This, of course, was a shadowy representation of what would be; for multitudes of the souls had no existence when he saw the vision. The voice of their blood was great, for, contrary to Gibbon’s supposition, their number was great, who had "resisted unto blood striving against the sin" of apostasy in sacrificing to the gods and in denying Jesus.
 
 
 
 

 

 


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