Notes on the Apocalypse Part 22

[Footnote 2: Gibbon has unconsciously written a commentary on prophecy!--an involuntary witness, like Josephus!]

[Footnote 3: "It has been our lot to hear the voice of the third woe,"

Faber.--"In this I entirely agree with that expositor." M'Leod. The blinding influence of earth's politics upon the minds of pious men, has often occasioned the hearts of their brethren to "sigh for their inconsistency."]

[Footnote 4: The terms "clergy and laity" are of papal origin, and the unlearned Christian should know that they are contrary to the mind of the Holy Spirit. 1 Pet. v. 3. The body of the people are "G.o.d's heritage,"--_clergy_.]

[Footnote 5: Gibbon.]

[Footnote 6: Mosheim.]

[Footnote 7: Such is the interpretation of Bishop Newton!]

[Footnote 8: Faber.]

[Footnote 9: This is the opinion of Mr. Faber.]

[Footnote 10: Scott.]

[Footnote 11: Scott]

[Footnote 12: So Mr. Faber imagined.]

[Footnote 13: So designated by Nicholas, late emperor of Russia.]

APPENDIX.

THE NEW JERUSALEM.

Interpreters are much divided in opinion as to the import of this symbol. Some think it represents the church on earth during the period of the millennium; while others, no less learned and pious, consider it as an emblematical representation of the heavenly state. Of those who acquiesce in the former view, some consider the arguments "quite conclusive." It may be conceded that much may be advanced, and with great plausibility, in support of this position.

Perhaps the most specious arguments to this purpose are such as the following:--"That the New Jerusalem is distinguished from the Old, because of the superior light and grace of the present dispensation of the Covenant. Moreover, the glowing descriptions of the church militant given by the prophets, especially Isaiah, are thought to be as boldly rhetorical as those of John; yet those lofty flights are confessedly descriptive of the church on earth. Besides, who can conceive how "the kings of the earth bring their glory and honour into" the heavenly state? or how are "the leaves of the tree of life for the healing of the nations," when there _are no nations to be healed?_ etc.

To these arguments the following answers may be given.

The church is one under all changes of dispensation, and by what names soever she is called: but it does not appear that we are warranted by Scripture usage to view the New Jerusalem as a designation of the church in her militant state. She is indeed sometimes called in the New Testament by Old Testament names: as when Paul calls her by the name Zion, (Heb. xii. 22.) But he does not say, _new_ Zion. Again, when our Lord promises, (as in Rev. iii. 12,) to reward "him that overcometh," it must be supposed from the connexion, that, as in all similar cases of spiritual conflict, this reward is to be conferred in a future state,--heaven. But part of the reward he describes in these words:--"I will write upon him the name of the city of my G.o.d, which is New Jerusalem." Surely it may be supposed without presumption, that in this place New Jerusalem means heaven. Nor is the a.s.sumption true,--that the descriptive language of the Old Testament prophets is always to be understood of the church on earth. For instance, can the following language (Is. x.x.xiii. 24,) be predicated of the saints while in the body:--"The inhabitant shall not say, I am sick?" "The glory and honour of the nations" are the "saints of G.o.d, the excellent;" who while here, are "the light of the world, the salt of the earth;" and doubtless nations as well as families and individuals "have learned by experience that the Lord hath blessed them for their sakes:" (Gen. x.x.x. 27; x.x.xix.

5;)--and that he has also "reproved kings" and destroyed nations for their sakes, (Ps. cv. 14; Is. xliii. 3, 4.) And when all the saints who are to rule the nations, (Rev. xx. 4, 6,) for a thousand years, shall have been brought home to glory, then emphatically will the glory and honour of the nations be brought into the New Jerusalem.

As to the "leaves of the tree for the healing of the nations," it may be remarked, that their sanative virtue will have been experienced by national societies on earth: and there is not, there never was, nor will there ever be, any other healing medicine for them, (Ezek. xlvii. 12) In addition to what has been said, it is worthy of notice that the tree of life, in allusion to the delights of the garden of Eden, which was an emblem of heaven, is mentioned in the Apocalypse, near the beginning and near the end of the book, (chs. ii. 7; xxii. 2.) Now, we are told expressly that this tree is "in the midst of Paradise." But we learn both from our Lord and the apostle Paul that Paradise signifies heaven:--"To-day shalt thou be with me in Paradise," said Christ to the penitent thief. "I was caught up into Paradise;" that is, "the third heaven," said Paul. Did Christ and Paul mean the visible, or the invisible church militant by the name Paradise? But the tree of life flourishes there, and all the redeemed eat of its fruit. They are where the tree is, the tree is in Paradise, and Paradise is heaven itself: therefore we are warranted to conclude with certainty that New Jerusalem is a symbol of the church triumphant; and, consequently, that those parts of chapters twenty-one and twenty-two, which are of symbolic structure, are descriptive of the heavenly state.

THE ANTICHRIST.

This word does not occur in the Apocalypse, nor in any other book of the New Testament except the first and second epistles, by the apostle John.

There it is found in the singular and plural form. (1 John ii. 18, 22; iv. 3; ii. 7.) The apostles in their ministry had spoken frequently and familiarly to the disciples of this personage, as an enemy of G.o.d and man. "Ye _have heard_ that Antichrist shall come." "Remember ye not,"

asks Paul, "that, when I was yet with you, I _told you_ these things?"

(2 Thess. ii. 5.) Paul blames his countrymen, the Hebrews, that they had need that one should teach them again which be the first principles of the oracles of G.o.d, (Heb. v. 12.) And it is just so now, in the case of most professing Christians, learned and illiterate; they yet need to be taught again what is meant by Antichrist.

All who are acquainted with the sentiments of the reformers of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries are aware that their conceptions of this enemy were vague and confused. Persecuted as heretics and apostates from the only true church, the church of Rome, the reformers very naturally concluded that the Pope, or the church of which he is the visible head, was the Antichrist. And this opinion is very generally held at the present day.

Mr. Faber, however, dissents from this popular notion, and with much confidence and plausibility broaches a new theory of his own. His style is always forcible, and so perspicuous that he cannot be misunderstood.

In his "Dissertation on the Prophecies," he lays down the following canon or rule for expositors:--"Before a commentator can reasonably expect his own system to be adopted by others, he must show likewise that the expositions of his predecessors are erroneous in those points wherein he differs from them." To enforce this rule he adds,--"It will be found to be the only way, in which there is even a probability of attaining to the truth." I can neither admit the justness of his rule, nor the conclusiveness of his reason; for by its adoption, "of making many books there would be no end; and the world itself could not contain the books that should be written." To deduce the truth from any portion of G.o.d's word, it is by no means necessary that the expositor shall undertake the Herculean task of refuting all the heresies and vagaries which "men of corrupt minds" have pretended or attempted to wring out of it. But as Mr. Faber is not to be reckoned in this category, I shall pay him so much deserved respect as to apply to himself _his own rule_ in some following particulars:--

By a formal syllogism Mr. Faber proposes to overthrow the generally received interpretation of the term _Antichrist_, that it means, the _Papacy_, or, the _Church of Rome_. Thus he reasons:--"He is Antichrist that denieth the Father and the Son: but _the Church of Rome_ never denied either the Father or the Son: therefore _the church of Rome_ cannot be the _Antichrist_ intended by St. John." Now, in this argument, which seems to be so clear and conclusive, there is a latent sophism, an a.s.sumption contrary to the Scriptures. The false a.s.sumption is, that the word _denieth is univocal_; that is, that it has in the Bible, and on this doctrinal point in particular, only _one sense_; whereas this is not the case. The Church of Rome does indeed "profess to know" the Father and the Son, but "in works denies" both, (1 Tim. v. 8; t.i.t. i.

16.) Therefore Mr. Faber's conclusion is not sustained by his premises, and the Church of Rome might be the Antichrist for any thing that his syllogism says to the contrary.

Mr. Faber imagined that "Republican France,--infidel and atheistical France,"--was the Antichrist; and he labored with much ingenuity to sustain his position by applying to revolutionary France the latter part of the eleventh chapter of Daniel, together with the prophecies of Paul, Peter and Jude. I presume that most divines and intelligent Christians are long since convinced, by the developments of Providence, that he was mistaken. The commotions of the French Revolution and the military achievements of the first Napoleon, however important to peninsular Europe, were on much too limited a scale to correspond with the magnitude and duration of the great Antichrist's achievements. They were, however, owing to their proximity to Britain and their threatening aspect, of sufficient importance to excite the alarm and rouse the political antipathies of the Vicar of Stockton upon Tees! Mr. Faber's Antichrist is an "infidel king, wilful king, an atheistical king, a professed atheist," of short duration, and his influence of limited geographical extent. He is not in most of these features the Antichrist of prophecy, whose baleful influence is co-extensive with Christendom, and whose duration is to be 1260 years. Mr. Faber's erudition is to be respected, his imagination admired, but his political feelings to be lamented. Indeed, his very ecclesiastical t.i.tle of office,--"Vicar," is itself partly indicative and symbolical of the prophetic Antichrist.

I do not believe that infidel France, whether republican or monarchical, nor the Papacy, nor the Church of Rome, is the Antichrist of the apostle John; yet I do believe that all these are essential elements in his composition. The following are the princ.i.p.al component parts of that complex moral person, as defined by the Holy Spirit, by which any disciple of Christ without much learning may identify John's Antichrist.

His elemental parts are three, _and only three_, and all presented in the thirteenth chapter of Revelation. The "beast of the sea," (vs. 1, 2,) the "beast of the earth," (v. 11,) and the "image of, or to the first beast," (v. 14,) that is, the Roman empire, the Roman church and the Pope: all these in combination, _professing Christianity_; these, with their adjuncts as subordinate agencies const.i.tute the Apocalyptic Antichrist. Besides this personage, well defined by the inspired prophets, Daniel, Paul, John and others, there is no other Antichrist.

An "infidel king, a professed atheist," as distinct from this one and symbolized in prophetic revelation, I find not. I conclude that such a personage is wholly chimerical, framed as a creature of a lively imagination.

THE IMAGE OF THE BEAST.

Mr. Faber is unsuccessful in his interpretation of the "image of the beast." His reasoning is ingenious, specious and intelligible as usual.

He labours to prove that the wors.h.i.+pping of images by the Papists is the meaning of the symbol. Material images, however, whether of papal origin or otherwise, are harmless vanities: "for they cannot do evil, neither also _is it_ in them to do good," (Jer. x. 5.) The case is quite otherwise with this image. It has "life, speaks, and has power to _kill_," (Rev. xiii. 15.) These properties of John's "image" are so opposite to those of the Papal images, that they effectually confute Mr.

Faber's fanciful, not to say whimsical theory. It has been already shown that the "image" symbolizes the Papacy, the _fac-simile_ of the Roman emperor.

THE BEAST'S "_deadly wound_."

The Erastian heresy, the usual concomitant of prelacy, will readily account for Mr. Faber's explanation of the "deadly wound," which the first beast received in his sixth head. Constantine, he thinks, inflicted that wound by abolis.h.i.+ng paganism. He writes as though the beast had been _actually killed_, and had lain literally dead for a period of nearly three centuries! (viz., from 313 till 606.) Yet the apostle a.s.sures us that the "deadly wound was healed." The _beast did not die_. Daniel gives no hint of the death of his fourth beast, which is the same as John's beast of the sea, until his final destruction at the close of the 1260 years. It was in fact under the reigns of Constantine and his successors, that ambitious pastors were nurtured into antichristian prelates, and pa.s.sed by a natural transition into Popery. The empire never ceased to be a beast during the whole period of its continuance. The sixth _head_ was wounded, but the beast still survived. The sixth or imperial form of government was changed, but that change brought no advantage to the Christian church either in her doctrine or order. As a distinct horn of this beast the British nation with her hierarchy is easily traceable to mystic Babylon in point of maternity. Since, as well as before the time of Henry the Eighth, spiritual fornication has ever been the crime of the "British Establishment." This historical fact requires no proof.

Mr. Faber seems to me to give too little prominence in his exposition to Daniel and John's beast of the sea, as an enemy to Christ. Indeed, he appears to overlook the leading idea involved in the name Antichrist, as a _subst.i.tutionary_, false, and therefore inimical or hostile christ.

Instead of keeping before his mind the glorious person of the Mediator as the special object of Antichrist's enmity, as prophecy requires, he places before him the church or the gospel instead of Christ. Hence he writes thus:--"We find in the predictions of St. John,--(why not _St_ Daniel?) two _great enemies_ of the _gospel_, Popery and Mohammedism."

Then he adds,--"a third power is introduced," (Preface, p. 7.) This "third power" he calls "a wilful infidel king," and, as already noticed, interprets it of "atheistical France." Now, it will be evident to the intelligent reader that among his "three powers" considered by him as "enemies to the gospel," he has entirely lost sight of the _seven headed ten horned beast_, and _his hostility to Christ_! He has, in fact, manifestly subst.i.tuted his imaginary "wilful king",--infidel France, for the Roman empire, the beast of Daniel and John, the agent that slays the witnesses, (Rev. xi. 7.) To almost every expositor, and in his lucid moments, even to Mr. Faber himself, it is apparent, that the Roman empire is the primary element in the complex personage that wars against the Lamb. Even kings are but _horns of the beast_, and Popery but a _horn_. (Dan. vii. 20; Rev. xvii. 12, 13.)

It is therefore a great mistake on the part of this learned author, to feign an Antichrist distinct from the three confederated enemies of Christ and his witnesses,--enemies so clearly pointed out in prophecy by appropriate and intelligible symbols:--the beast with ten, and the beast with two horns, and the image of the first. These three, all professing the Christian religion, and practically denying it, without the shadow of a doubt, const.i.tute the Antichrist of John, (1 John ii. 19-21.) This is the identical enemy described by Daniel, and according to the inspired predictions of both prophets, doomed to eternal destruction, (Dan. vii. 11; Rev. xix. 20.) Hence it is obvious that Mr. Faber's "wilful king" is wholly a creature of his own fancy, const.i.tuting no feature of the prophetic Antichrist.

THE LITTLE BOOK.

This symbol is in the tenth chapter evidently distinguished from the one in the fifth chapter. It is considered by several interpreters as containing all that follows to the end of the book. According to this view, it would be larger than the sealed book, (ch. v. 1.) Such a view is altogether untenable, involving, as it does, almost a palpable contradiction. The little book is indeed comprehended in the sealed book, as a part of the whole; or it may be viewed as an appendix or codicil, or perhaps still more correctly as a _parenthesis_, interrupting the series of the trumpets, that the object of the seventh or last woe-trumpet maybe thus described and rendered intelligible when sounded.

Mr. Faber is correct in saying, "the eleventh, twelfth, thirteenth and fourteenth chapters, in point of chronology run parallel to each other;"

but he is mistaken when he says the "little book comprehends these four chapters." It comprehends only so much as intervenes between the close of the ninth chapter and the fifteenth verse of the eleventh chapter; or, in other words, between the sounding of the sixth and seventh trumpet. To be more correct and explicit,--the tenth chapter introduces the little book, and the eleventh chapter, from the first to the fourteenth verse inclusive, exhibits an abstract of its contents,--a condensed narrative or mere outline of the contest during the 1260 years.

THE DEATH OF THE WITNESSES.

Many divines have considered the death of the two witnesses, as consisting in a moral slaying, equivalent to apostacy. Mr. Faber views their life and death as altogether political. He censures Mr. Galloway for "want of strict adherence to _unity of symbolical_ interpretation,"

but he inadvertently falls into the same error. a.s.suming, as he does, that the two witnesses are the Old and New Testament _Churches_, where is the "unity of symbolical interpretation" when he tells us that the witnesses were politically slain in the "disastrous battle of Mulburgh in the year 1547, by the total route of the protestants under the lead of the Elector of Saxony and the Landgrave of Hesse?" The _political_ death of two churches in the battle of Mulburgh!--Such language exemplifies neither the accuracy of historic narrative, nor the "unity of symbolical interpretation:" nor does it accord with another rule of the writer, one of his three cardinal rules, namely,--That "no interpretation of a prophecy is valid, except the prophecy agree _in every particular_ with the event to which it is supposed to relate."

Mistaking the character of the witnesses, as one of the primary symbols in the Apocalypse, he is unable to ascertain in history either their ident.i.ty or work, their life or their death. Having imagined their political death in 1547, he supposes their resurrection to political life in 1550,--"by the accession of Edward the Sixth to the throne of England!" and "the defeat of the Duke of Mecklenburgh in the October of that year!!" Of course, these witnesses, according to Mr. Faber's interpretation, resumed their function of prophesying so soon as they were restored to political life: but we look in vain for the prophesying of the mystic witnesses after their ascension to the symbolic heaven, (Rev. xi. 12.) As we have shown to the readers of these Notes, their lives and their testimony, or prophesying, terminate together, (ch. xi.

7; xii. 11.)