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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 4

White Robes


 
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"And there were given to them each white robes," says John, stolai leukai. These were symbolically given to the souls already slain, and reposing underneath the Altar of Sacrifice. They were stoles, or external vestments reaching to the feet, like to that with which the Son of Man was invested, when John saw him in the midst of the Seven Lightstands burning with spirit-oil (Apoc. i. 13; Dan. vii. 9); and like to those holy garments worn by the High Priest in which he appeared before the Ark in the Most Holy Place. Kings and priests were arrayed in white robes "for glory and for beauty;" they are therefore symbols of worthiness on the part of those who receive them; of their being exalted to kingly and priestly honors and glory; and consequently, in the case before us, of the deliverance of these symbolical souls from prostration underneath the Altar, by resurrection, and of an incorruptible investiture, when they shall be "clothed upon with their house" or white robe "which is from heaven ... that mortality may be swallowed up of life" (2 Cor. iv. 2-4).

This was especially promised to the "few names in Sardis," because they had "not defiled their garments" -- "they shall walk with me in white: for they are worthy" (Apoc. iii. 4). This shows that the white is symbolical of the worthiness of the clothed. And again, in the same place, "He that overcomes, the same shall be clothed in white raiment" -- showing that the white robe is emblematical of victory. Hence, "O Death, where is thy sting? O Hades, where is thy victory? Thanks be to the Deity who giveth us the victory," or white robe, "through our Lord Jesus Christ" (1 Cor. xv. 55,57). When, therefore, in the Apocalypse, personages are emblematically clothed with white raiment, it signifies that they represent persons who have been raised from among the dead to incorruptibility and life, which have become to them the "spiritual body" of the eternal state. Thus, the twenty-four elders sitting upon their thrones are "clothed in white raiment" (iv. 4). These are a symbolical twenty-four; and among those they represent are the souls underneath the Altar to whom the white raiment is promised, and therefore emblematically given. A soul underneath the Altar and a soul sitting upon a throne, though one and the same person, is that soul in two different states and in times far apart. A soul, whose blood is poured out at the bottom of the Christ-Altar of sacrifice in the fifth seal period, to whom a white robe is dramatically given, fifteen or sixteen hundred years after, as we may suppose, is seen by John alive again and reigning with Christ a thousand years (xx. 4); and this conjunction of souls with Christ in preparation to assert their rights, and to take possession of their millennial thrones, is symbolized by the twenty-four presbyters in white, in association with the Heavenly Camp, as "signified" by the Four Living Ones full of eyes.

These same souls and elders are represented in Apoc. vii. 9, as "a great multitude, which no man could number, of all nations, and kindreds, and people, and tongues, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed with white robes, and palms in their hands." In this scene, the emblematic and acted-promise of the fifth seal is fulfilled. They are actually clothed, and as the "palms" indicate, have gotten the victory over all their enemies. They were in full possession of the great salvation, to which they have attained through great tribulation. Their robes are made white by washing in blood, and that not their own blood, but the blood of the Lamb. In their soul-body existence, or life-time, they believed the promises covenanted to the fathers and "the faith" which came by Jesus -- in other words, in "the things concerning the name of Jesus Anointed," among which, the cleansing from sin by his sprinkled blood, the blood of the Abrahamic covenant, holds an indispensable and prominent position; they believed this gospel, and were immersed in water into Christ, and so put on their holy garments, which are therefore said to be "washed and made white in the blood of the Lamb" (vii. 14). "Therefore are they before the throne of the Deity, and serve him day and night in his temple and he that sitteth on the throne shall dwell among them. They shall hunger no more, neither thirst any more; neither shall the sun light on them, nor any heat, for the Lamb who is in the midst of the throne shall feed them, and shall lead them to living fountains of waters; and the Deity shall wipe away all tears from their eyes." Such is the white-robed "holy nation" of the Deity -- "the Israel of God," sealed by his truth to eternal glory.

Concerning this holy and mighty people, Paul says: "All things are for your sakes" (2 Cor. iv. 15). "Ye are the holy temple of the Deity. ... All things are yours; whether the world, or life, or death, or things present, or things to come: all are yours; and ye are Christ’s and Christ is the Deity’s" (1 Cor. iii. 16-23). This is all said to the saints and faithful in Christ Jesus; and it shows what an important and honorable people they are considered to be by the Deity who are christians of the ancient and original stamp -- Christadelphians. There are very few of them to be found in the year of grace 1864 -- so few that one would be justified in saying almost none; for, certainly, these bloodshedding parsons and their flocks, who are on both sides of the line hounding on chaplained armies of their fraternal potsherds to mutual slaughter and devastation, committing all kinds of depreciations and profligate abominations upon the helpless and unoffending victims of their lusts, can have no scriptural claim to the name christian. What are they but heathen of the blindest species! Assuredly they are not the holy temple of the Deity. Though they have got the world -- for they are the world -- the world is not theirs; nor is any thing that exists for their sake. No; it is for that poor and despised company -- that "contemptible few," who are "rich in faith, and heirs of the kingdom which the Deity hath promised to them;" it is for the sake of these that all things consist.*

[* The reference to the "bloodshedding parsons ... on both sides of the line" relates to the American Civil War that was raging at the time. ed]

This important testimony, that all things are for the sake of the true believers, is presented symbolically throughout the Apocalypse. Because the things represented in the seals were for the sake of believers of the original Abrahamic type, the Lamb and the Four Living Ones are introduced as the ruling spirit of the scenes. The Lamb with Seven Horns and Seven Eyes, all-seeing and all-powerful, was superintending and working together all things for the good of them who love the Deity, and who are the called according to his purpose; so that, suffering with him, when that purpose is effected they may all be glorified together (Rom. viii. 28,17). The Lamb, the Spirit, opened the seals and worked their invisible machinery for the good of these sufferers unto death, if need be, represented by the Eyes of the Four Living Ones. He subverted the pagan constitution of Daniel’s Fourth Beast for their good and his own glory, and made a present of its dominion to those degenerate adherents who had fought against it, who, though they were wretched, miserable, poor, blind, and naked, as modern papists and protestants almost, were an improvement upon the blind and dissolute worshippers of the gods. He gave the beast’s dominion to the self-styled and self-glorifying "catholics," who said they were "rich, and increased in goods, and had need of nothing;" but to the true and faithful, who doctrinally, and not in mere form or sacrament, kept the word and denied not his name, he gave no part in that dominion, but, emblematically, gave them the glorious and beautiful "white robes" of the Royal Priesthood, which shall inherit "under the whole heaven" a more magnificent dominion, when its holy kings and priests shall have destroyed the Fourth Beast with the burning flame of divine fury, even the dominion of all nations, enlightened, regenerated, and truly civilized, for a thousand years.

Furthermore, as with the seals so with the trumpets. The judgments of these fell not upon the worshippers of the Greco-Latin gods, nor upon "the servants of the Deity, sealed in their foreheads" with the truth, but upon the Laodiceans of "the Holy Catholic Church," the enemies and persecutors of the faithful and true, since they had succeeded pagans in the sovereignty of the Dragon. The trumpet-judgments were for the sake of the sealed servants of the Deity, the machinery of them was engineered by the Lamb for their good. The prayers of all these saints ascended as a cloud of incense for divine intervention in their behalf. The Deity heard their cry, and answered them by casting fire from the golden altar into the Greco-Latin Catholic earth. The voices, thunderings, lightnings, and earthquake which ensued, and the trumpets which sounded afterwards, in their results, were all for the good and for the sake of the Woman and her seed, who kept the commandments of the deity and had the testimony of Jesus Christ (Apoc. viii. 3; xii. 17).

And when, again, we descend to later times, the period of the first six vials, the contemporary existence of faithful ones is admitted by the exhortation addressed to them in ch. xvi. 15. They are represented by the Spirit as watchers with garments well kept -- watching the Vial-Signs, and preparing, by trimming their lamps, for the thief-like incoming of the Ancient of Days. "All things" enacted in the vial-periods "are for their sakes." Not, certainly, for the sakes of papists, Mohammedans, and protestants, upon whom the wrath is poured out, but for the sake of "the saints and prophets," and of those within the Altar of Sacrifice, alluded to in verses 6 and 7. Devotees of the various "names and denominations" of religiondom -- the "names of blasphemy," of which the scarlet-colored politico-ecclesiastical beast is "full" -- these are not within the Altar, neither are they watchers with garments well kept. They are all fast asleep, snoring in midnight darkness. Nothing is being done for their sakes; only for the sake of those who obtain a change of raiment in putting off the filthy rags of their theological factions, coming out from among them, and putting on Christ as their white robe of righteousness, through an intelligent induction by faith and immersion. By doing this they join the Heavenly Camp, and become "eyes" in the Four Living Ones, for whose sake every thing is done. For this cause it is, that, in ch. xv. 7, one of the Four Living Ones is represented as giving the seven vials full of the wrath of the Deity to the seven angels. This signifies that the outpouring of the seven vials is for the sake of those represented by the Four Living Ones, some of whom are contemporary with all the vials, and all of whom, to whom "white robes" shall be given will be engaged in the execution of the seventh, which exhausts in their destruction the indignation of the Deity against Babylon the Great Mother, the National Ecclesiastical Harlot, and all the Sectarian Abominations of the Earth, which have directly or indirectly sprung from their adulterous commerce with the world.

For further remarks upon the white robes of the faithful, the reader is referred to Vol. I, (I.v.6), (III.i.1), and to what will be said hereafter when treating of the Bride of Apoc. xix (Vol. III, ch. XIX. 2).

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