But the passage conveys much more, and of surpassing interest. It is not only the all-important distinction of heavenly glory as well as of earthly attached to the divine Person of our Lord. The declaration from His lips that He is the bright, the “Morning Star,” elicits the prompt answer of the bride, the Lamb's wife in title; and not here only but that of the Holy Spirit who had anointed and sealed, and here fittingly guides her. “The Spirit and the bride say, Come.”
Evangelicalism, afraid of going too far and disposed to humanize the truth, and thus enfeebling its intrinsic force, would address this cry to man, that he might be brought to Christ for new birth and the remission of his sins. But this is to misapply, darken, and lose what the scripture here imports. For it is Christ announcing Himself as the Morning Star which draws out the heart's answer. His bride, the church animated and directed by the Spirit, thus responds to His love, and bids Him come according to His promise. Long had she waited for Him, and watched earnestly more than those that long for the morning. This in nature is indeed but a passing relief; whereas His coming will be the crowning joy of love and the instant change into glory forever, though not yet its appearing before the world.
At the beginning He had said, I am coming again, and will receive you unto Myself, that where I am, ye also shall be. For He departed, crucified by the world, but on the cross glorifying God as He never had been and never so needs again, glorifying God even as to sin, and thus furnishing to Him, as this only could inaugurate, a new glory. He was therefore glorified by God and in God, and this straightway, as the basis of the gospel at its fullest as well as of the church of God, Christ's body. In order to do this with other purposes pertaining to the heavenly and new state of things, He departed out of this world unto the Father. But far from abandoning the feeble objects of His grace, it is there and then strenuously declared (John 13:1) that having loved His own that were in the world, He loved them unto the end. His love was out-and-out. Besides, the Father sends, and He too sends, the Advocate meanwhile, the Holy Spirit of truth, to abide with and in them forever. But He also assures them of His own coming again to fetch them into the Father's house: there and no less; that they may be with Himself in those many mansions.
When the Lord predicates of Himself “the bright, the morning Star,” it is no mere wish or enthusiastic emotion of nature that bursts forth. The Spirit Himself takes the initiative in the heart of the church. “The Spirit and the bride say, Come.” The earthly bride does not receive the Spirit till the Lord shall have appeared in glory. There will be true conversion in a godly remnant of Jews long before, in days of sore trial and ever growing evil and danger, some slain for righteousness' sake, and truth as far as known, others preserved to be the nucleus of the generation to come. But the great privilege of the out-poured Spirit from on high is when the King is come, and the wilderness becomes a garden, and a garden is counted a forest. It is the day of Israel's full blessing and of the restitution of all things concurrently. But here every solid reason points to that heavenly bride, who alone has the privilege of the indwelling Spirit to give her present communion with Christ in all things before He comes, and here in His coming for her. The form simple as it is has striking beauty, and is as characteristically suitable as full of grace. For He speaks, and she replies intelligently in the love that at once answers to His love.
First there is the normal relation recognized, and the Spirit as competent and graciously prompting the bride. But next many a child of God is quite uninformed and unconscious of his proper association with Christ after this intimate pattern. Yet he does hear His voice, and knows not the voice of strangers. The reality of his divine birth is thus fully owned, while ignorance of the bridal relation is graciously provided against up to (we may say) the last moment that intervenes: “and let him that heareth say, Come.” What is there to fear in His coming, Who for us died and rose and comes again? What love, joy and honor are couched in His coming again to receive us unto Himself, and set us with and like Himself now in the Father's house! Therefore “let him that heareth say, Come.” Is there not everything possible to preclude fear, to fill with delight and confidence?
But to the last the outflow of divinely given compassion for the wretched and lost has its place. The gospel has its glad and urgent message for souls, after Christ and His coming as the nearest of all to the church and to the Christian. Hence the quite distinct turn in the closing half of the verse. The difference is made clear by the necessary and plain omission of “say.” It would be out of the question for any but the bride and the Christian to bid Christ come; those who know Him by faith and are assured of His love can and are called to say so. But it would be madness for any others to join in such a call. Because of their ruin and for their sins they need Him first to save their souls. Till they believe, He could only be their judge. But it is still the day of grace. The word for such accordingly is, “And let him that is athirst come “; nor this only, but “let him that will take life's water freely.”
The thirsty one is indeed invited to come. The church has the spring within, and rivers flowing without; but she calls to Christ. It is His name that avails for all the sinner's need before God. There is no obstacle on His side in the way: God gave and sent His Son for this express purpose. His death, however wicked and destructive might be man's part, only the more met his wants in God's surpassing grace. Let him in all his need “come,” not say, “Come.” Yea “he that will,” however feebly he as yet feels his evil state, shall the more truly feel it, as he by faith apprehends divine love; “let him take life's water freely.” God's grace gives it to him that is only willing, to him that comes just as he is. Is it not indeed a wondrous verse? And it emphatically applies till Christ comes.
It has already been pointed out how ill 2 Peter 1:19 has fared at the hands of the erudite, and how the only real sense is lost by those who either unconsciously or willfully sever “in your heart” from the immediate context. “The morning star” in Rev. 2:28; 22:16, has been put to like torture, through ignorance of the heavenly hope which it figures, and by none more strangely than by the author of “Thoughts on the Apocalypse” (pp. 150, 151). “The glory of the star belongs to distant and unknown worlds; but the sun is a part of our own system, and is set specially to nourish and enlighten it. Consequently when Christ first appears in the fullness of divine glory, in the glory of the Father, His own glory, and the glory of the holy angels, He is symbolized by the star. ‘I am the bright and morning star.' To him that overcometh I will give the morning star, i.e. association with Himself in this high character of glory. It is to flesh and blood terrible glory, and in it he will exercise the destructive judgment whereby the day of the Lord will be ushered in. But when He brings in that gracious and benign display of glory, whereby Israel and the earth is to be abidingly blessed, we find Him symbolized by the sun.”
Can one conceive more entire surrender to speculation without an attempt at scriptural proof? It is allowed that the morning star (not “the star” as he puts the case) differs from the sun; but where in the Bible is it ever represented as belonging “to distant and unknown worlds?” Where is Christ symbolized by the star when He “first appears in the fullness of divine glory,” and of His other glories? When Christ in Rev. 2:28 associates the overcomer with Himself in that high character of glory, what ground is there to assume that it is “to flesh and blood terrible glory?” or that “in it He will exercise the destructive judgments whereby the day of the Lord will be ushered in?” If “the star” distinctively points to “distant and unknown worlds,” is it consistent to make it the emblem of glory to flesh and blood? is it not incongruous with his own definition to say that in the star glory Christ will exercise “the destructive judgment whereby the day of the Lord will be ushered in”? And while the Sun of righteousness shall arise with healing in His wings for those that fear His name, is he entitled to omit that they shall tread down the wicked as ashes under the soles of their feet in that day, for it is to burn as a furnace;. and the proud and all that work wickedness shall be as stubble; and that day shall leave them neither root nor branch. This is hardly “gracious and benign,” though He will fully be so for His own.
Nor is it a casual slip, but deliberate and systematic error. For in pp. 322, 323, the author returns to the same mischievous absurdity on Rev. 22:16. “He has other essential glories of His own. ‘Before Abraham was, I AM.' He is the root and offspring of David, AND the bright and morning star. I have already spoken of the star, as the symbol of distant and unearthly glories derived from high and unknown spheres, into which the eye of man, as man, can never penetrate. It is in such glory, strictly and divine, that Jesus will come. It will be the true light of God's own glory and holiness arising suddenly on the deep darkness of the world's night. It will not be at first the sun arising with healing on His wings (for the day-star precedes the sun), but it will be the sudden visitation of strange and distant glory, suddenly breaking upon the abyss of darkness beneath. He will come as the Son of God in His own glory and in His Father's glory, and in the glory of the holy angels, and it is into such glory that they who are His at His coming are to be taken; for His promise is, To him that overcometh will I give the morning star.'“
Now the simple fact is that the sole use scripture makes of the morning or day star is as the figure of Christ Himself coming for us to make good the heavenly blessedness with Himself promised to the overcomer (as in Rev. 2:28); and the heart getting hold of this hope (as in 2 Peter 1:19). There is not the faintest token of “distant and unknown worlds,” any more than of “destructive judgment” associated with it. The truth of God is as plain as the fiction of Mr. N.'s prophetic system; and even he was compelled, and not here only, to allow that “the day-star precedes the sun,” as of course it does, and that it means taking those that are His at His coming into a glory divine and heavenly far above the earth.
But it may surprise some enamored with this incoherent scheme, that its author has elsewhere to allow that somehow the risen saints “are evidently recognized in the commencement of this chapter [Rev. 19] as being with the Lord in glory.” This witness is true, but incompatible with his most cherished views. He seems to connect it with Rev. 16:15; yet this has no relation with the saints' translation to heaven, but with the Lord's coming judicially. His idea is that there are two distinct acts of Christ's coming for judgment! the unearthly star-like one, in which He deals with the tares and gathers up to heaven the wheat; and the earthly one, when the saints follow Him out of heaven, and He destroys the Beast, the False Prophet, and the apostate hosts.
The whole idea is utterly false. For 2 Thess. 2:8 is sure and plain that when the Lord appears with His saints, His first act is to destroy the lawless one and of course his followers; which Rev. 19:19-21 confirms as well as Rev. 17:14.
Oh! the darkness which fails to see that the bright morning star is His coming in fullness of grace to associate the heavenly saints with Himself, without the smallest sign of judgment if we accept the word of God! How sweet a hope now to arise in our hearts! How glorious and what joy of love when He thus comes to receive us unto Himself for the Father's house! Yes, He announces Himself as the bright, the morning star; and the Spirit and the bride say, Come. Destructive judgments! unknown worlds! Nay, but the consummation of His love and ours as one with Him; and this realized in the Father's house: were it not so, He had never raised our hope so high. Did He not say that the Father Himself dearly loves us, because we have dearly loved the Son and have believed that He came from God, yea the Father?
He will do more than display us before every eye in the same glory with our Lord, that the world may know that He loved us as He loved Him; He will gratify His own desire that we shall be with Him, and above the world where no earthly eye can penetrate, that we may behold Christ's glory, for the Father loved Him before the world's foundation. Is not this so light a thing to many saints that they never hear or speak of it? Yet is its spiritual joy far beyond any manifestation before the world however glorious. Weigh it, brethren, that you may learn how much your earthly preoccupation robs you of what should be your proper portion in fellowship with Him above.
Nothing has been said here as yet of what is a great bugbear to certain minds. They regard the “secret rapture” as enough without further proof to condemn the notion when stated. Those who have learned its truth and its importance are content to speak of the rapture of the saints without further adjunct. Yet the morning star, unseen save by those who spiritually watch, lends itself in the readiest way to what other scriptures point. Let us consider these a little more.
In John 14:1-3 it is implied in our Lord's coming again and receiving us unto Himself. Neither time nor season, neither contingent change nor prophetic date, neither general state of the earth nor specific sign of any sort, finds the least place. Infinite love of the Son in communion with the Father elevates us above all such thoughts into an incomparable blessedness above with Christ. Is it conceivable that any Christian mind could doubt that the very manner of it is what the apostle Paul was given to announce in 1 Thess. 4:16, 17, and 2 Thess. 2:1, and 1 Cor. 15:51, 52, with details as to the dead saints and the living ones? Phil. 3:20, 21, and Jude 24 sustain the same heavenly truth. In all it is the same translation of the saints to be with the Lord.
Not one word in these different scriptures teaches visibility to the world. It is the full making good of that sovereign grace which without a displayed signal to the saints, still less to those who are not concerned, has given us the promise of heavenly association with Christ. Here we shall have the hope blessedly accomplished. In all these intimations there is the most marked absence of others then beholding what the Lord is effecting. It flows from that special love of His for His own, which excludes strangers from intermeddling with His joy. But the day of the Lord duly follows when the world shall see both Him and them appearing in glory (John 17:24).
What has misled people is the confounding of the revelation with the rapture. That as distinctly calls for “every eye” to see it, as this excludes it. The Lord will come for His own, will raise those that were put to sleep through Him, will change us the living that remain until then, both in an eye's twinkling at the last trumpet, and thus gather us together to Him, not only into the air to meet Him, but so received to set us in the Father's house before the presence of His glory with exultation. All this is quite above and apart from the ken of man. But the public vindication of Christ and His own before the universe is when He will come forth after the bridals of the Lamb on high, as well as the final judgment on earth of Babylon the great harlot to which God under the seventh vial gave the cup of the wine of the fury of His wrath (Rev. 17, 19.).
Then and not till then is the visible display of the Lord and of the glorified saints that follow Him out of the opened heavens, when He smites the nations, shepherds them with iron rod, and treads the winepress of His wrath. It is fittingly and with precision called, not His presence merely, but “the appearing of His presence” (compare 2 Thess. 2:1 with 8), by which the Lord Jesus shall annul the lawless one then revealed as well as the apostate imperial chief, who shall both be cast into the lake of fire and brimstone. Thus does God render tribulation to the troublers of the saints and repose to the troubled, not at the rapture of the saints, but at the revelation of the Lord Jesus from heaven with angels of His power, in flaming fire taking vengeance on those that know not God, and on those that obey not the gospel of our Lord Jesus. This would have been quite incongruous with all that is said of His coming to change His saints and translate them to heaven. But it is in entire keeping with His appearing, His glorified being with Him, for the double purpose of their enemies paying penalty of everlasting destruction from the Lord's face and from the glory of His might, and of His coming (not to receive but) to be glorified in His saints and marveled at in all that believed in that day. For it will be the day of the Lord then truly present, the saints having been gathered to Him previously.
With this perfectly agrees such a scripture as Rev. 17:14. It is ignored by those who oppose what they call the “secret rapture” and no wonder, for it is utterly incompatible with their hypothesis. Those with the Lamb, when the Beast and the vassal kings make war with Him, are called and chosen and faithful, the first and last of which terms can describe only His accompanying saints, not angels. This is confirmed irrefragably by the later description in Rev. 19:14, where the symbolic clothing points to the saints, not to angels (compare ver. 8 before); and yet more by the previous marriage of the Lamb above. All concur in proving that the rapture of the saints, unseen by the world, whatever the astonishment produced by the disappearance of the living saints, must have preceded that revelation of the Lord and His saints glorified which is associated with the manifest and awful judgments He will execute on their enemies.
It has already been shown that Col. 3:4 beyond doubt connects the manifestation, not the rapture, of the saints, with the Lord's manifestation in glory, not with His coming or presence simply. They are then, and not before, manifested in glory. Christ is therefore not seen in glory before they are caught up. They shall be manifested together. The scriptures on which men have thought differently refer to the Jews, not to Christians. But these godly Jews will be gathered in the land to Him as their glorious King, instead of being first caught up, and then at a later epoch appearing with Him in the same glory. Compare Matt. 24:31-41, Mark 13:27-31, Luke 21:27-36; also Isa. 24:21-23; 25; 26; 27
It may be, as it has been, alleged that though none of the scriptures which certainly apply to this subject speak of visibility to men, we do hear of the Lord's “shout,” of the archangel's voice, of the trump. But why should any attach loudness of sound to these expressions, solemn and impressive as they undoubtedly are? Why foist in that which appeals to the senses of outside mankind or of the world, when the language employed avoids it? It fully bespeaks the personal and gracious intervention of the Lord Jesus for His own, the faithful summons of God, the acclaim of the archangel, and in Cor. xv. the immediate and final notice to depart; but none of these goes necessarily beyond the persons interested. They directly concern the household of faith, and only the glorified.
Men have compared the Lord's descent for us with Ex. 19, but with singular infelicity. For thunder and lightnings were then, and the voice of a trumpet “exceeding loud,” so that all the people trembled. And Mount Sinai was altogether on smoke, and Jehovah descended upon it in fire, and the smoke from it ascended as the smoke of a furnace, and the whole region quaked greatly. And the voice of the trumpet waxed louder and louder. All thus was of set purpose minatory, alarming, and awful, as became the ministry of death and condemnation.
Even when the Lord comes in restoring mercy for Israel by-and-by, we read in the prophet that in that day a “great” trumpet shall be blown, and in the evangelist His angels will be sent with a great trumpet, or a great sound of trumpet. This does express what is wholly absent, where scripture tells of His coming in love and majesty to make good His love to the heavenly saints. For His appearing to Israel is bound up with the infliction of judgments on the apostates, Jewish and Gentile, and the punishment of the enemies of His people and of the wicked in general. As with His own ascension, our rapture will be the triumph of grace which leaves the world unmolested for the moment, though the providential inflictions of God soon begin to follow in measured order and increasing degree, till all culminates in the day of the Lord at their close, as detailed in the Book of Revelation.
We have seen that one of the most able and accepted and determined to refuse to discriminate between the Lord's coming for us and our coming with Him, between His presence and the appearing of His presence, was compelled to own that the glorified saints must be caught up to heaven for some time before they with Him emerge from it. For they follow the King of kings who descends to smite the nations with a sharp sword and to shepherd them with iron rod, as well as to tread the winepress of God's exceeding wrath. By B.W.N. they are allowed to have been there from the destruction of Babylon under the seventh vial. This however clashes with his fundamental principle, that God acts for Christ till He appears in person. Now, as all God's vials precede Christ's appearing, He cannot appear before they are poured out. If therefore Christ destroys Babylon and takes up the saints then or before its destruction, so that God is praised above for His judgment of the great Harlot, He must have come for them before the day of His revelation from heaven in chap. 19. for His still more awful judgment of the Beast, &c. This clearly overthrows the system du fond en comble; not only the arguments of others, but his own long considered statement and published defense.
The main question for those who value the truth is, Where or when according to scripture are the saints translated to heaven? Now it is beyond just question that, the book of Revelation opens with the Lord seen in the prophet's vision judging the seven churches in Asia (proconsular). This (1) was what John saw; then (2) “the things which are,” a very notable description of the seven churches as judged by the Lord in His letters to each respectively; and lastly, (3) “the things about to be after these,” or the visions of the future to follow up even into eternity itself.
The third division is the strict prophecy, consisting of two portions (4-11., and 11-22:5), for each opened with a prefatory introduction, and goes on to the end.
Here then may be found, adequate evidence before each series of prophetic visions, when the rapture of the saints takes place. The church-state is adumbrated in the seven churches, “the things that are “: not the actual Asiatic assemblies only, but what they prefigured successively as things would to the hearing ear by what the Spirit says. In Rev. 4, 5 are indicated the glorified saints already symbolized as in heaven, twenty-four elders, chief-priests of the fully numbered courses, crowned and enthroned around God's central throne. This is definite; and they are no longer souls disembodied but changed. Any saints, Jewish or Gentile, called afterward as very many are, add nothing to them: they are complete. During the period that follows no church-state is seen.
In chap. 7 is a numbered complement out of the twelve tribes of Israel, and after that a countless crowd of Gentiles, objects of divine choice and blessing; but they are separate. There is no fusion into one, as the nature of the church requires. God keeps each distinct throughout from first to last. So far it resembles His work in the O.T. Only grace largely works outside Israel and so far like the N.T. But church-state is closed. It is a new condition with abundant mercy; and in the face of idolatry, apostasy, persecution, tribulation, and divine judgments, a people is prepared for the earth under the reign of the Lord personally present and His glorified saints: a reign of righteousness and peace, Satan wholly excluded, and the Holy Spirit poured on all flesh for 1000 years.
That the existing church-state closes on earth at the end of Rev. 3 on the protracted view is as demonstrable, as that the overcomers out of it, with all that were Christ's before them, are thenceforth seen as glorified in heaven from Rev. 4, 5. Nothing but the coming of Christ to gather those that believed to Himself can account for the new company above, the disappearance of recognized churches here below, and the formation of separate companies out of Israel, and the Gentiles thenceforward for the earthly purposes of God during the crisis of evil and His judgments, till the Lord comes from heaven to put down Satan and his agents, and to establish His world-kingdom. It is therefore between Rev. 3 and iv. that the true epoch for the saints' translation best suits; and a transition period ensues, when the church disappears, and grace works, in presence of solemn chastenings of men, to get ready a nucleus for the Lord's appearing and for the millennial earth, as well as for martyrdom meanwhile.
This conveys the general prefiguration of the steps God takes in judgment, though with dealings of concurrent mercy, to chastise the world, and especially its more favored parts, and to pave the way for investing the Lamb at the fitting time with its direct and supreme government. This ends with Rev. 11:18 for the earthly and the eternal kingdom.
In the fresh section it is not a central throne with enthroned heirs of God and Christ's joint-heirs around, but the temple of God in heaven is opened, and the ark of His covenant seen, not on earth but still above, and yet with added signs of present displeasure. The first great sign seen there is of God's sure promise for Israel's glory. It is not the bride, but the travailing mother of Him who is to tend all the nations with iron rod, arrayed with the sun, the moon under feet, and upon her head a crown of twelve stars. Supreme authority is to be here, the sun that rules the day; the changing and reflected light of the old covenant, no longer guiding but under her feet; but also the fullness of human subordinate authority. Meanwhile the child that was born, the Son of might, was caught up to God and to His throne. For the great dragon, another sign, was seen there, having seven heads and ten horns, emblematic of the Roman empire, in deadly opposition to both. War in heaven ensues. The dragon, the devil, is cast out with his angels; woe to the earth and to the sea, if the heavens and those that dwell there (for so it will then be) rejoice greatly! The devil has great rage, knowing he has a short time; and he vents it against the woman and the rest of her seed, the godly remnant.
But these conflicts are regarded in a far deeper way than in the earlier visions. For there are brought to view the counsels of God centering in His Son, and the hostility of Satan in his last efforts during the half-week which has still to run out, before the Lord in person crushes him and his lawless instruments as in Rev. 19-20. It is the import of the woman's seed caught up on high that is insinuated. For in the manner of the prophetic word the apostle intimates in mystic style the translation to heaven of the saints before the dates begin.
We are thus viewed as in Christ who was caught up there, while the woman and the remnant of her seed are objects, not only of Satan's hate, but of God's providential care on the earth. As we shall share Christ's authority when He takes His great power and reigns (Rev. 2:26, 27), so we are symbolically wrapped up in Him in His being caught up out of Satan's way. We are one with Him in this foreseen rapture, as the apostle Paul in Rom. 8:33, 34, applies to the Christian what Isa. 1:8, 9, says of Christ. Thus we again, and in a very different form suited to this part of the prophecy, come round to the still higher promise in Rev. 2:28. We are associated with Christ as the morning Star before the Sun of righteousness introduces the day for all the world, and we too share the glorious reign with Him. If, instead of groundless fancy, we listen to scripture, the bright, the morning star shines not for the slumbering world, but for those who watch during the dark night. It is essentially spiritual, visible to saints only, not to the world which will have to do rather with the Sun of righteousness.
No sober person of intelligence doubts that the Holy Spirit had first to be poured out, and the gospel to be preached to all the creation. But the N. T. attests that this was done during that first generation, and that the saints were then taught by the apostles to wait for Christ habitually and constantly with no revealed event between to precede or intercept. This is what some daring men venture to ridicule as “any-momentism.”
The misapprehension of ἡ κυριακὴ ἡμέρα in Rev. 1:10 is nothing but a senseless incubus, with the still worse absurdity that the seven churches of Rev. “the things that are,” are seven future groups of a Jewish character. They are alike a fanatical folly without a shred of truth. But no trick of controversy can to any effect legitimately attach such nonsense to the heavenly hope of the N. T., or get rid of the undeniable facts, that churches thenceforward disappear from the book of Revelation for the earth; that a new sight of glorified saints was given in heaven; and that the fresh action of God follows, concurrently here below, of a secured complement of Israel, and a blessed and far larger crowd out of all the nations; and this keeping them apart, instead of being baptized in the power of the Spirit into one body as we are, and as the nature of God's church characteristically demands.
Rev. 22:16 is no exception: only an ignoramus could argue so. For from ver. 6 to the end we have simply appeals to John and the churches that then existed, however permanent the profit might be, as the suited conclusion to the visions previously revealed, as well as its introduction. The Lord would have all that preceded testified in the churches, which was soon utterly forgotten and is generally to our day. But this affords no ground for imagining “churches” in the N. T. sense during the entire period of the crisis, or any part of it, from Rev. 6 to 19, or indeed any longer as on the earth.
I presume that in the strange error of the Rev. James Kelly and of Dr. Bullinger, which they got from the Tractarian Drs. Maitland and J. H. Todd, (as they perhaps from the blunder of the famous critic, J. C. Wetstein, in his N. T. Gr. ii. 750), they wanted Jewish churches for the days of the great tribulation, as their opponents, like Dr. West and a crowd of others, interpolate churches during that period by a still more groundless error, if this be possible. At any rate, if we bow to “the words of the book of this prophecy,” there is no basis of revelation for either. Those who contend on scripture alone for the heavenly hope have ever rejected such notions; nor have these errors any real connection with that truth.
But the closing words of the last chapter of the book are to the last degree impressive, as they corroborate the essential difference between the Christian hope, and the wondrous communication that comprises the unfolded visions of what is to befall the earth in judgment as well as mercy from Rev. 6 to 19 inclusively. This latter is in the richest way the prophetic word, as became in God's wisdom and goodness the winding up of the N. T. But, as elsewhere, so the Lord here carefully guards His own from the mistake of confounding it with what is so distinct.
There are to be two successive series of judgment, of a general and of a special character, as in the seven seals, and the seven trumpets. A general securing to Himself out of Israel, and from among all the nations, accompanies the one; and if the Jews in unbelief seek to establish their polity and religion in unbelief, God begins within the other to recognize a godly remnant during those days of sin and sorrow, with an adequate testimony like that of Moses and Elijah, which none can hinder till their work is done. And the Beast is first seen in his deadly antagonism. Martyrdom ensues; and the merry triumph of the enemy is answered, not only by His power in raising the slain and taking them up to heaven in view of their foes, but by a defined overthrow of man's pride on earth. Then follows the end of man left to himself, and the world-kingdom of our Lord and His Christ is come.
Next, we go back, to let in details of the deepest moment, of which enough has been said. And the kingdom of glory follows, the great white throne, and the eternal scene.
Now none can be so prejudiced as to think that all this can unroll into facts before the Lord comes, though the unbelief of man approaches such an extreme. Yet many saints contend, as we know, for a certain part to intervene before He comes for us. This, however, is what none can show on any legitimate grounds of scriptural evidence. Proof on the contrary has already been given, that the only consistent point for the removal of the saints to heaven is when the churches are no longer seen or heard of on earth, and a new symbolic presence is presented in heaven. After this the steps are revealed by which God chastises the guilty world. In the midst of the great tribulation He calls and forms, not in one body as now but separately, a twofold nucleus of blessed men, Jewish and Gentile, for the earth under the Lord's future reign; as He had already taken to Himself on high those destined to reign with Him when that glorious time arrives, as we see in Rev. 20-22:5.
The fulfillment of the prophecy awaits its sure and varied application when the time arrives for the earthly question to be answered. Now the Lord is occupied with a heavenly work, wherein is not Greek and Jew, circumcision and uncircumcision, barbarian, Scythian, bondman, freeman; but Christ is the all; and in all, quite independently of earthly change, because the end of that work is to be with Him where He is. And thus He concludes, “He that testifies these things saith, Yea, I come quickly. Amen, come, Lord Jesus,” is the divinely supplied reply. The constant waiting, apart from times and seasons, is kept up to the last for him that has an ear to hear.
It is striking to see how careful the Lord is to exclude prophetic events from mingling with our proper portion in His coming for us; and all the more, because the Revelation is in the main the great Christian book of prophecy. Hence, while giving solemn warnings in these concluding appeals, He fixes our hearts on His coming in sovereign grace without a revealed earthly event to intercept it. He precludes any delay on the score of governmental dealings with men on the earth. He allows no room for confusion with intervening changes in the world. “He that testifieth these things saith, Yea, I come quickly,” to which our graciously provided answer is, “Amen, come, Lord Jesus.” Can any words be simpler, or more effective, for the heart?
No intelligent believer denies that the hopes prevalent in Christendom are baseless, vain, and presumptuous. The gospel was sent to save sinners, and to associate them when saved with Christ, the glorified Head, and thus to constitute them a heavenly body, His body. Its aim is not to gather into one the world, but the children of God that were scattered abroad. The gospel was to be preached everywhere as a testimony, but with no such thought as winning all Israel or the nations while He is on high. It is reserved for the Lord, not for the church, in judicial authority, to take His great power and reign, when His world-kingdom is come: a future and total change from His present seat on His Father's throne. That, not this, coalesces with His appearing and His kingdom (2 Tim. 4:1). It is “the blessed hope” of what God will do for man and the world; and we rejoice anticipatively. There will be no general amelioration for the race till then; and we await it with assurance, love it as redounding not to the blessing of man only but to the glory of our Savior God, and in our measure and place testify to its truth and solemnity. In the Pastoral Epistles, His appearing alone is pressed, because responsibility all round is the point, rather than distinctive privilege; and then, not before, “in that day,” will the issues appear of fidelity or of failure. This in its own time the blessed and only Potentate shall show, the King of those that reign, and Lord of those that exercise lordship.
Before that day of manifestation must be the awful apostasy, and the audacious uprising against God of the man of sin, whom the Lord Jesus will appear to destroy, as in 2 Thess. 2. Before that day, as is made evident in Rev. 19, must be fulfilled the predicted blows of divine chastisement, as revealed from the seals of Rev. 6 to the last vials of God's wrath in Rev. 16, of which the judgment of Babylon in the descriptive appendix of 17, 18 are a concluding part and explanation. Then follows the day of the Lord in Rev. 19, when the glorified follow Him out of heaven to the destruction of His enemies, the binding of Satan, and the thousand years' reign of Christ and the risen saints over the earth, as in Rev. 20. All this is as clear as God's word makes it, whatever be the doubts and difficulties of the learned, or the unbelief of worldly-minded men.
But the still more intimate and proper hope of the Christian is His coming for those that love Him and watch during the night for Him with eyes undimmed by hope deferred, the Morning Star, before the day. And as the apostle corrected the errors of the Thessalonian saints, yet confirmed the constant waiting for Him, carefully joining himself with them and all saints in the same attitude, so here does the Lord guard us all from confounding His coming with that day, and God's necessary antecedent dealings of infliction or of mercy on Israel or the nations.
Meanwhile may “the grace of the Lord Jesus be with all the saints. Amen.”
(Concluded.)
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