THE Spirit of God has shown us the destruction of Babylon under the last vial. We are now to learn in the chapter before us what was her special evil, what there was so hateful to God in Babylon; not only what her own conduct was, but what there was in her connection with others, that God could endure it all no longer—why it was that He singled her out above others for His vengeance. And this is not a thing that we can put aside from us, as perhaps some others may be in the Apocalypse, as comparatively foreign or distant. For though there may be, and, I doubt not, will be, a further development of Babylon, yet God looks at it as a moral whole; as a system of corruption that has been at work, and that is still at work. When judgment can delay no longer, it may have taken a peculiarly aggravated form; but the evil exists and is active. Babylon is not so much the snare of a profane man, as it is that of one who, having a certain idea of religion, seeks to reconcile it with the world. It is then that the corrupting influence becomes a source of chief danger to the soul.
Now we shall find that, first of all, the chapter gives us the vision which the Apostle John is taken to see; and next we have a certain explanation of that vision. The angel's word commences more particularly in this way at the seventh verse, while the first six verses are occupied with recounting the vision. One other remark I would make before proceeding farther. This chapter does not carry us forward as a matter of history. It is rather the Holy Ghost looking back upon the character, conduct, and relationships of that Babylon which had been already shown as the object of the judgment of God. This is worthy of note, because, if not seen, there is inevitable confusion in our thoughts of the book. In chap. xiv. we had the fall of Babylon in connection with the evil workings of Satan, and with the dealings of God in goodness or power, including the Son of man's judgment at the close. Now, it is of no little moment to have the precise niche where this intervention of God is to be looked for, and that we had in the next place. For we have seen in the providential judgments of God—by which I mean those which are executed by angels, and not by Christ directly—Babylon reserved for the last stroke of His wrath under the seventh vial. It is God acting-God still employing angels. The Lord Jesus is thus far quiescent, if I may so say; not acting yet in vengeance personally upon the earth.
In Rev. 17 the Holy Ghost stops to enter into the details of the moral cause of Babylon's terrible fall. “There came one of the seven angels which had the seven vials, and talked with me, saying, Come hither; I will show unto thee the judgment of the great whore, that sitteth on [the] many waters” (ver. 1). It is described as a harlot here; not only as a woman, but as a corrupt and licentious one. And I suppose that no dispassionate person would doubt that this term is used in special reference to religious corruption. A little lower down, in the third verse, Babylon is said to be sitting on the beast; here she sits by the many waters. There is a slight difference in the Greek. Sitting by the many waters does not mean that she was literally or locally thereupon, but beside them. Thus, you may say, for instance, that London is seated on the Thames. Now, no one of common understanding would suppose the meaning to be that London was actually situated and built over the bed of the river, but that the Thames is the stream which characterizes London. So here, in the same way, you have the whore described as seated on (i.e. beside) the many waters. These are explained in verse 15 “The waters which thou sawest, where the whore sitteth, are peoples and multitudes and nations and tongues.” The figure implies the wide-spread influence which this abandoned woman exercises. But there is more than that. In the second verse it is said, “with whom the kings of the earth have committed fornication, and the inhabitants of the earth have been made drunk with the wine of her fornication.” This is something more than her seat by the mass of waters. It is immediate intercourse of an evil kind carried on with the kings of the earth-her power in drawing away and seducing the affections from Christ, who is the only worthy object of all love and worship. In the sphere where God's light had been displayed, the chiefs or leaders are led away by the corruptress, and the people are entirely ruined as to all discernment of the mind of God.
Nothing, then, can be plainer than the general bearing of these few verses. We have the vast influence of Babylon set forth by the figure of a woman seated beside many waters; next we have the great leaders of Christendom, the kings of the earth, who have committed fornication with her; and then the inhabitants of the earth stupefied with the wine of her fornication. There are different degrees of guilt, but all were the result of connection more or less intimate with Babylon. “So he carried me away in the Spirit into the wilderness” (ver. 3). In spite of all her pride and worldly glory, to the saint of God the wilderness is the only place where the Spirit leads him to behold her. Had John gone in his own spirit (so to speak), it might have carried him to look at Babylon, not in the wilderness, but rather in the mirage of some garden of the Lord. But he was carried away by the Spirit of the Lord into the wilderness, and there he sees the harlot sitting upon a scarlet-colored Beast; a closer thing, and of more ominous import, as we noticed, than her description at the end of verse 1. This shows us the actual position of the woman. She has supremacy over the Roman empire. For there can be no legitimate question that the beast here brought before us is that same Roman empire, of which we have heard such terrible doings, and so portentous a doom, in previous chapters. It is the beast that is full of the names of blasphemy, as his heads were so viewed in chap. xiii. 1. Babylon is a whore or corrupting system; but blasphemy is what belongs to the beast. It is a more open and audacious evil. The woman's way is more seductive, and one that lays hold of the affections. But blasphemy is the expression of a power that fears neither God nor man. As for the woman, though seated on the beast, glad to be exalted through him, and willing to use him for her own purposes, yet is she distinctively the religious system of the world. She is “arrayed in purple and scarlet color, and decked with gold and precious stones and pearls:” the obvious figures of all that the world counts great and glorious and beautiful here below. But she has also “a golden cup in her hand, full of abominations and filthiness of her fornication” (ver. 4). In spite of all her glittering, gaudy splendor, how the Holy Ghost brings out together with it, what is most nauseous! He has no words too strong to express His sense of what He see is in the cup. It is “full of abominations and the filthiness of her fornication.” By “abominations” in Scripture regularly is meant idolatry. This is the gravest distinguishing feature in Babylon. As the Beast was full of names of blasphemy, so was the harlot's cup full of abominations. But besides the idols, there was this corrupting influence, here called the uncleanness of her fornication. They are two distinct things. There might be the depraving influence without the idols; but in Babylon both are actively at work.
In the Apocalyptic churches it was observed that in Pergamos appears the doctrine of Balaam, who taught, among other things, to commit fornication. When we came to Thyatira, there we saw Jezebel, who imposed idolatry by force. Here in Babylon, both are united. The evils that crept into Christendom in those earlier days, discerned in Pergamos and Thyatira, both appear concentrated and undisguised in the cup of this wicked woman. They were budding then; now they are full-blown in all their hatefulness before the prophet. They may be tricked out in all the meretricious tinsel of this world; but nothing could change or hide their real character before God.
“And upon her forehead a name written Mystery, Babylon the great, the mother of the harlots and of the abominations of the earth” (ver. 5). There was great pretension to truth-a masterpiece of the enemy in counterfeiting the revealed ways of God. The mystery of Christ and the church had been revealed; now there is the mystery of this anti-church; not the mystery of faith and godliness, but of lawlessness-Babylon the great, seated on the Beast, the awful contrast of the church which is subject unto Christ. Here she rules the Beast. The holy city, Jerusalem, comes down out of heaven from God, having the glory of God,-not “that great city," but the holy city, which is the true way in which God characterizes the bride, the Lamb's wife, the glorified church. This religious system, on the contrary, sprang from the earth,-not to say more than that,-enticed into its defiling embrace the kings of the earth, and extended its malignant influence far and wide. Such was Babylon, the mother of harlots, and abominations of the earth. Whatever evil thing was used by Satan for the purpose of ensnaring the affections from Christ, whatever idolatrous object took His place, she is the mother of them all. Babylon is the great parent of all the worldly systems, and of the idolatries used by the enemy to draw away souls entirely from the Lord.
But there is another thing mentioned in the vision still more extraordinary to the prophet's mind. He could not doubt the religious character of this woman, Babylon the great; he sees her, at the same time, drunken with the blood of the saints. He could well understand a religious system becoming corrupt. Jerusalem itself had alas! become as Sodom and Gomorrah, first for guilt, and afterward well-nigh for judgment. But that the woman should be drunken with the blood of the saints was what filled even John's mind with great astonishment. Bad as passion is, it is not the worst thing that the heart of man is capable of. The deceivableness of false religion is that in which Satan displays his direct power. For the very thing which God has given for light and blessing, to win the heart and to bring into fellowship with Himself, is abused by the enemy to make a man a worse man than ever-twofold more the child of hell than before.
But astonished as John must have been of old to hear such a sentence upon beloved but guilty Jerusalem, here he has to wonder still more when he learns that the woman who had assumed the place of the church should not only end in the same blood-guiltiness, but should be drunken with the blood of the very martyrs of Christ Himself. This was what filled his mind with amazement indeed. (Ver. 6.)
And we now come to the explanation which the angel furnishes of the vision. It is of deep importance; for you will find that when God interprets, He not merely opens to us that which needed solution, but He gives us truth more abundantly. “And the angel said unto me, Wherefore didst thou marvel? I will tell thee the mystery of the woman and of the beast that carrieth her, which hath the seven heads and the ten horns” (ver. 7). This is, in fact, the main subject of the chapter; it is a description of the woman more particularly, and of her connections with the Beast, the Roman empire. For manifestly and beyond denial, the woman and the beast are two distinct things. For if the beast be the Roman empire, as those will have seen who have followed me through this book, the woman cannot be. She may be seated upon the beast, but for that very reason, she is not the same thing. And not only the woman is distinct from the beast, but, as we find afterward, the beast turns against the woman and takes his part in destroying her.
Therefore it is quite evident, that it is impossible to suppose the woman and the beast to be the same thing. In the end they are so violently opposed, that the one becomes the destruction of the other, So that the woman must necessarily be some power distinct from the empire. We shall find more reasons that confirm their distinction.
“The beast that thou sawest was, and is not; and is to ascend out of the bottomless pit, and go into perdition; and they that dwell on the earth shall wonder, whose names were not written in the book of life from the foundation of the world, when they behold the beast that was and is not and shall be present” (ver. 8). I have no hesitation in saying that so runs the last clause of the verse. This would not be questioned by those who are sufficiently acquainted with the subject to form an opinion. Persons may differ in the explanation of the verse; but there can be no doubt that such is the true reading. The common text here is almost contradictory of itself, and affords no just sense.
Now let us consider a little what is taught by this verse. The beast is the Roman empire, as we have before seen. But we learn here that that empire was to cease to be. The countries and peoples that composed it would remain; but its imperial unity would cease to exist. The fractional parts would be there, each nation having its own independent government, but there would be no corporate bond. Such is their condition in our day, as it has been for more than a thousand years. “The beast which thou sawest was and is not, and shall ascend out of the bottomless pit.” The angel characterizes this empire as no other empire ever has been or could be. It was first found in its strength, then to cease, and afterward to rise again. But there is an exceedingly grave feature that attaches to the reappearance of the empire; it is to have a diabolical character. And as it comes from Satan, so must it end with Satan: it shall “go into perdition.”
These things could not be said in the same sense or strictness of any other empire. None that has appeared yet upon earth, but what has had its rise, its splendor for a little while in full power, and then its extinction, sudden or gradual, never to rise again. I am not aware of any example to the contrary. Most peculiar is the lot of that empire which was so prominent in the Apostle John's mind. It existed in the time of John: under it indeed he was personally suffering. But it was to terminate its career; and then, after a condition of non-existence, “to rise out of the bottomless pit.” “They that dwell on the earth shall wonder. when they behold the beast that was and is not, and shall be present” When this beast reappears in its last Satanic phase, men would be carried away by their excessive admiration of it.
“Here is the mind which hath wisdom. The seven heads are seven mountains, on which the woman sitteth” (ver. 9). This is a material point, though simple. It is a local mark, intended to indicate to the wise mind, where this woman has her seat. There ought not to be the least doubt, that it is a reference to Rome. The word “Babylon” had been used, it is true, in speaking of it, as Sodom and Egypt were figuratively applied to Jerusalem in chap. xi.; but the Chaldean capital had nothing to do with the city of Rev. 17 That had long passed away as an imperial city; whereas, in verse 18, it is said of this Babylon that “it reigneth over the kings of the earth.” More than this, the literal Babylon in Chaldea was built upon the plain of Shinar. Here the woman was seated on seven mountains; and all the world is aware that such is the well known characteristic of Rome. In prose or in poetry, if any city were described as being seated upon seven hills, every one would say, That must be Rome.
But we have an additional explanation in the following verse. “There (or they) are seven kings: five are fallen, and one is, and the other is not yet come: and when he cometh, he must continue a short space” (ver. 10). Here the Holy Ghost, without entering into detail, refers to the various forms of government which had succeeded each other in this famous city, Rome. There were seven heads or kings; not contemporary: for five, as it is said, were fallen; one is, and the other is not yet come. This implies succession. Five different modes of government had already passed away. “One is,” namely, the imperial form then subsisting, when the apostle lived the line of Caesars. Another of the seven was not yet come, but when it did, it must continue a short space.
“And the beast that was and is not, even he is the eighth, and is of the seven, and goeth into perdition” (ver. 11). There is this peculiar character attributed to the beast here, that in one sense he would be of the seven, and in another he would form an eighth or extraordinary beast. It would, in certain respects, be a new form of power altogether, while, in others, it would be but a revival of what had gone before. The reason is, that the beast, at first, might be like any other empire. It might owe its rise providentially to human revolutions; for men, when they have tried democracy, are apt to grow weary and disappointed, and then some vigorous arm takes advantage of the reaction, and a despotic power is the not unnatural result. I have no doubt this will be the history of the west. The eighth head, though an individual ruler, is spoken of as the beast or empire, because he is morally the empire, directing, as supreme, all its authority. He is of the seven, for there will be a continuance or taking up of some such form of power as before. But he will be the eighth, because there will be something so peculiar as to deserve a name to itself. That new feature may refer, perhaps, to the diabolical power that stamps the beast in his last or quasi-resurrection state.
“And the ten horns which thou sawest are ten kings, which have received no kingdom as yet; but receive power as kings one hour with the beast. These have one mind, and shall give their power and authority to the beast.” It is not that we are to suppose “one hour” to mean mystically, or literally, such a brief division of time, as it has been the vain attempt of so many persons to try and make out. But the meaning is that these are kings who receive power as kings for one and the same time with the beast. Abstractedly, ever so many years might be meant, or only a short period. It is not a question of what an “hour” means. These ten horns should not merely have their period of power, but they reeve it for one and the same time with the beast. This is most important to the due understanding of this verse. It overthrows all the prophetical systems which have attempted to make out that this chapter has been exhausted in the past or present. The common view of the chapter may have a certain measure of truth; because, as I fully believe, the book of Revelation was intended to be partially accomplished all through the dispensation: but the complete fulfillment is only at the close. The barbarian hordes came down from the north and east of Europe and Asia, about the fifth century, and overspread the Roman empire, bursting over Europe from all points, and attacking it within and on every side, so that the empire, already too extended, and crumbling under its own weight, found it impossible to hold up against these vigorous and repeated assaults from so many quarters. By degrees, the Goths and Vandals, &c., settled themselves in the various parts of that which was once united. They were the enemies that destroyed the empire.
But this is not what is shown us in the chapter. It tells us that these kings receive power for one hour with the beast. Supposing that these barbarian kingdoms had been exactly ten in number, even this does not answer to what we have here; because we are told that these ten kings receive power for one and the same time with the beast. They only received their power when the beast was dead, when the Roman empire had fallen. They destroyed the beak, first, and then erected themselves into independent kingdoms.
Nothing can get rid of the sure and simple fact that these powers were not kingdoms in the empire while the empire lasted. They had not power with the beast, much less did they give their power and strength to the beast. For nothing is more certain than that when they became kingdoms, it was at the expense of the empire. When it was gone, they took up the broken fragments, and converted them into separate kingdoms, France, Spain, &c. —but the empire as such was fallen. The beast that is described here acquires power as an empire at the same time that these kings receive their power as kings. In other words, they are contemporary powers, the beast and the horns, and not that which we find in history at all. This prophecy shows us that the empire is only formed as such again at the same time that these ten kingdoms have their final power. They are co-existing, and have their dominion together-each of these several kingdoms working to a common end under the beast.
Thus, in the facts of the past, first of all there was an united unbroken power, when the Roman empire governed the western world, and did not admit of different independent kingdoms within its own limits. There was no such thing than as the kings of Spain, France, Italy, &c. It was an all-absorbing power, and would never have allowed such separate kingdoms to cluster round the imperial city. But the peculiarity of the future revived empire, is that it will admit of distinct kings. Two things will be united which never were before. First, there has been the empire without kings-at least, so it was in the West, which is the question here. Then there were kings without the empire. The new feature will be this: neither the beast without the kings, nor the kings without the beast; but both the beast and the kingdoms going on together. This is what never has existed before.
Hence the chapter gives us a view of the Roman empire as it will be resuscitated by the power of Satan, and shows that then it is destined to have the peculiar stamp of the enemy upon it. God Himself allows him to have his way for a short space, and to perpetrate all his wickedness before the end. Just as Judas was filled with Satan when he was about to betray the Lord for the price of a slave. He was under the influence of Satan before; but it is said then that Satan entered into him. He or his highpriest was the son of perdition: and this is the very name that is given to the future power that will rise up against the Lord from heaven. This empire is to rise up out of the bottomless pit, and to be clothed with a diabolical character and energy; and when it comes up, there are to be ten kingdoms or kings, exercising regal power for the same period with the Beast.
The next verse (13) shows us the policy common to them. “These have one mind, and shall give their power and strength unto the beast.” They are not jealous of the beast; their great object is to exalt him and to aggrandize his power. And what is the issue? what the use they make of their combined power'? “These shall make war with the Lamb, and the Lamb shall overcome them (for he is Lord of lords and King of kings), and they that are with him, called and chosen and faithful” (ver. 14). So it is evident from this, that the heavenly saints are already gone to the Lord. It is not that the Lord receives them now; they are with Him in the conflict, and before the conflict begins. And this is confirmed by chap. xix. 14. “And the armies which were in heaven followed him upon white horses, clothed in fine linen, clean and white.” Whence did they follow Him? Is it not from heaven? Christ is coming to attack the great adversary upon the earth whom Satan employs. But it is heaven that opens, and thence not only Christ comes, but “they that are with him, called and chosen and faithful.”
This is not a description of angels: for though angels may be said to be “chosen” or “elect,” they are never said to be “called.” “Called” is a title only used of men, and supposes the working of grace. Angels are not, and, I think, could not be, “called;” for if an angel were in a position of evil, he could not be delivered out of it; and if he were in a holy position, he would not need “calling.” Calling always presumes a condition out of which the called are brought. The believer is brought from a place of sin and misery into one of salvation and blessing. This is true of man alone. He is the only creature of God that is called, through God's grace, out of a state of ruin into the blessedness and glory of redemption. And as in chap. xvii. 14 there is this expression which shows us positively that saints and not angels are spoken of, so in chap. xix. 14 we are told that the armies, which follow the Lamb out of heaven, are “clothed in fine linen, white and clean.” Now it is said in the same chapter (ver. 8) that fine linen is the righteousness of saints. People may ask, are not angels said to be clothed in linen? Yes, they are; but it is not the same term that is used (e. g. in Rev. 15:6). The Spirit of God employs a different expression to describe it, never confounding the two things. The plain inference then is that the glorified saints are in heaven, with the Lord, before this conflict begins—not that they then meet the Lord in the air. When the Lord comes, we do meet Him in the air. Then it is that He will take us to heaven. But when He comes in order to judge and make war, we come with Him from, heaven. How long a time may have expired while we are in heaven, and before we appear with the Lord, we do not know; but the coming of the Lord for the saints is an event that takes place some time before He comes with them. When He comes with the saints, it is for the purpose of judging the beast, and his adherents. The church will come with Him then, and the Old Testament saints too, for they will have been caught up to the Lord at the same time that we are, I doubt not. “These shall make war with the Lamb” —but the victory is sure,— “and the Lamb shall overcome them, and they that are with Him, called, and chosen, and faithful.”
“And he said unto me, The waters which thou sawest, where the whore sitteth, are peoples, and multitudes, and nations and tongues. And the ten horns which thou sawest, and the beast, these shall hate the whore, and shall make her desolate and naked, and shall eat her flesh and burn her with fire” (ver. 15, 16). This is another verse of great value for understanding the chapter. The common text thus says, “the ten horns which thou sawest upon” the beast;” but it ought to be read, “the ten horns which thou sawest and the beast.” The importance of the change is this (and there is the best authority for it), that when people read, “the ten horns upon the beast,” they might have imagined that, the Roman empire being gone, then these ten horns took its place. This would very well have suited the past history. But, as we have seen before, that the ten horns receive their kingdom for the same time with the beast, so here the Spirit of God says, “the ten horns which thou sawest upon the beast.” Thus any person who weighs this with verse 12 would perceive how mistaken the usual thought is. “The ten horns which thou sawest, and the beast, these shall hate the whore, and shall make her desolate,” &c. J
That Daubuz, (1720,) should have labored under a mistake, as to the comparative claims of the two readings, one can conceive; that Vitringa, spite of his historical lore and general ability in expounding, should have ignored the best witnesses then known, is not perhaps very wonderful. But it is passing strange that in the face of the unanimity of critical editors, presenting every shade of religious prejudice and prepossession, such as Bengel, Griesbach, Lachmann, Matthaei, Scholz, Tischendorf, Tregelles, Voter, &c., who had no preconceived notions to blind their judgment, Mr. E. should persist in an opinion so unfounded. It is not a small matter to slight the evidence of the three uncials, forty cursives (some of the highest character), of the Acthiopic, Arabic of the polyglotts, Syriac, &c. If Wilkins is to be depended on, the Coptic, it seems, should be added. As to the Vulgate Mr. E. is misinformed. The common printed text, no doubt, has “in bestir;” but the very ancient and best copies (including the Amiatine in the Laurentian Library of Florence, Fuld. Demidov. Tol. &c.) read “et bestiam.” Whatever may be the inconsistency of Popish apologists, I cannot admire Protestant special pleading which contends for a reading that is utterly indefensible. In this instance, at least, it is plain which of the two is most open to the charge of blunting the edge of the prophetic sword. Rome is Babylon; but the ten horns AND the beast (hardly the Pope!) are yet to unite in destroying her. It is not the first intimacy or alliance which has closed in hatred and violence. The false prophet continues with the beast to the end; but this neither proves nor disproves that Babylon is the Romish church. Why may there not be a new form of religious wickedness in the Holy Land, even when Rome, city and church, shall have disappeared?
A little sample of this, not of course executed by the beast or by the kings, but by the will of the people, appears in the French revolution of the last century. There you had an infuriate people rising up against the woman (the ecclesiastical power that had ruled the earth being completely given up to the rage of the multitude, and men enriching themselves at her expense). But we must never meet one wrong by being guilty of another. The Christian way to deal with evil is ever by grace lifting us above it. Events that have been seen on a small scale will be then realized on a larger one. Good men—men worthy of honor and in other respects wise—have not only desired to get rid of Babylon, but have been too apt to sanction any means with that aim. I say not that saints are not to rejoice in her fall; but that they ought not to mix themselves up with the instruments of it, nor to cherish unfounded hopes of blessing then and thence.
Rome will always be the central city of this corrupt system. “The woman which thou sawest is the great city that hath sway over the kings of the earth” (ver. 18). There will, no doubt, be a further development of it before the close; for she who sits as queen has given proof even in our own days, that she can invent new doctrines, and boast new miracles, developing wickedness without conscience and with feeble protest, nay, in the midst of all but universal acclamations. And it will be true, I conceive, of Rome, as in all other cases, that before the judgment comes, her cup will be full. It was so with the iniquity of the Amorites, when God judged them. But God will employ the powers of the earth to deal with Babylon. No doubt the kings will think well of themselves for getting rid of such a scandal; but then the means used may be as bad as that evil itself. And what will be the issue? The millennium? Quite the contrary—they will make war with the Lamb. They will not only have got rid of Babylon, but will combine against Christ in the most direct and deadly nay. When this day comes, man, instead of being any the better for having turned against Babylon, will give all his power to the beast: and, bad as Babylon is, the beast is more openly wicked. Nothing is more hateful to God under the sun than religion, where it is used as a cover for corruption; and this is Babylon. But as for the beast and the false prophet, they will deny, God altogether. As we read in the Psalms, “The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God.” Babylon is not that willful rebellious spirit. Therefore, after having destroyed Babylon and eaten her flesh and burnt her with fire, after having enriched themselves at her expense, and having destroyed her, we find that those avenging powers will go to fight with the Lamb; they will set themselves in open opposition to the One of God's choice, the holy and heavenly Sufferer.
“For God hath put in their hearts to do his mind, and to do one mind, and give their kingdom to the beast, until the words of God shall be finished (ver. 17).” How remarkable it is to observe that thus it is man accomplishing the words of God, when his only thought is that he, in hatred to God, is blotting out the most corrupt sham from the face of the earth! No doubt Babylon will have deserved it; but the kings, without knowing how, are but doing servile work for Him whose authority they disown. In vain they will have had all God's dealings under the law before their eyes; they will have had the whole Christian revelation of grace and holiness, founded on and shown in the cross of Jesus, only to despise it; they will have heard and rejected the latter-day testimony, the gospel of the kingdom, which will be given by other (and I believe by Jewish) witnesses, after the church has been taken to heaven. Anything pretending to be a new testimony, while the church is on earth, must be false. But when the church is gone, God will take up His people Israel again, and will give a testimony, not so much meeting souls so as to put them in connection with Christ in heaven, which He is doing now, but sending out, far and wide through the habitable world, as a witness to all nations, the glad tidings that God's King is coming to set up His kingdom; “and then shall the end come.”
It is fellowship with Christ as the suffering One which gives us deliverance from the spirit of the beast, the spirit of proud independence. How shall we overcome with the Lamb? We must be with Him, and this is what gives the victory now. Our strength, in whatever comes before us, is to ask, How does the Lord feel touching it? Supposing I am invited to go to some great sight, to join in some movement that may be very attractive naturally, the question is, Does the Lord sympathize with it? Is he there? And if this applies to all other questions, still more does it decide in what concerns the holiest things, as, for instance, worship. What does the Lord sanction and sympathize with? What is most according to His heart and mind What really, and intelligently, and obediently gives Him honor? Such is the sole key for faith in this world; it unlocks many a difficulty, and through the opened door there is a plain path for our feet.
The Lord grant that none of us may put aside those solemn truths! To neglect His warning is the very thing that tends, so far, to bring about the state of things of which we have been speaking. That which carries away in this direction now is slighting the words of God; though we shall, in the end, be fulfilling them to our own shame. We shall be proving how little we have known of real heart-subjection to God—how little we had appreciated the grace in which we stand, and how little rejoiced in the hope of His glory. We shall manifest that we have not counted it an honor to bow, and to give up what we may like, or what others might like for us, where it was really a question of God's will. For to us this should decide all; because “we are sanctified unto the obedience and sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ” (i.e. to the same character of obedience which marked the Lord Jesus here below). It is not Christian to obey Christ merely because we must. Christ never obeyed thus. If a man only does a thing because, if he does it not, he knows he will be punished, it shows plainly that his heart is not in it—he does not want to obey. Christian obedience is the desire of doing a thing because it is the will of God, and the Holy Ghost gives us power through presenting Christ to our affections. Remember that to this we are sanctified. Cleansed by the blood of sprinkling, instead of its being a menace of death, as in Ex. 24, we are sanctified unto the obedience of Jesus Christ. We are not under the law, but under grace, and led of the Spirit of God. May we enjoy the power of His Spirit, and the fullness of His salvation! Bear in mind, however, that we are thus saved, not for ourselves, but to obey after the same pattern and measure of obedience as that of Jesus.