* Baur, Holtzmann, etzs.
EEVELATIOX, BOOK OF
EEVELATION, BOOK OF 26 i
Ot&st itnelf would at last turn In hatred. The demonic nature •f the beast is here quit* clear. The actual Satanic power in the writer's experitnce was Home, and his hope was for its Call ; but though it was the agent and embodiment of Satan's batred and power aguinst God's people, yet its fall will bring only the bindin;:, not the destruction, of Satan. He has other resources, and will be given an opportunity to make one more effort before the end comes. Tlie arnuigenient of material compels U3 to repird the threefold judy^uent upon Satan, one past (connected with Christ's birth and ascension), two future, ft preliminary binding connected with the fall of Rome, and ft flnal dei>truulion, as expressing^ realities in the author's mind DO less than tlie fall of Rome itself, to which he gives a detinite piftcc in this larjjer drama of the Christian conquest of evil. But reality need not mean materiality. Caution is needed in Intcr^ireting the antrelolocry of our book. We have already olwerved how littlu actuality, apart from Christ, lias the angel whoBpeake for him {''.>j. '2'3'^). In the lettflra we have messages from Christ to the Churches, but in form they come from the angel who represents Christ, through John, to the angels who represent the Churches. In spite of the dilliculty of supposing that John and his writing must mediate between two angels, it remains probable that the angel of the Church Is a real angel, conceiv(>d not as ruling over the Church, not as its heavenly guardian, but as its heavenly counterpart, personating its actual character, and hence worthy of praise and blame, not different from the Church itself ideally or abstractly conceived. John's writing of the message of the Christ-angel is, of course, for the •ake of the actual Church, which is really aildressed (note the use of the second person singular). It can be spoken of as a writing to the angel, in accordance with the heavenly setting of the vision, only liccauye the angel is the heavenly presence ftnd personal representation of the actual Church in its actual character. Agamst the contrarj- arguments of Zahn and others it remains that 'angel* is used throughout the book in the literal sense, and that no human official could be so completely identified with the Church, The intervention of John's book between two angels does not prove that they were not angels, but reveals the sense in which our writer ascribes reality to them. In order rightly to estimate the significance of the angelic ftnd demonic framework or background of our writer's pre- dictions we should study it« history, for it is no free invention or original insight of his. This eschatology, with its union of earthly (political) and unearthly (angelic) beings and events haa farreachmg roots, and one would need a far more complete re- view than can here be attempted of the angelology, demonology, ftnd eschatolo'^'v of the (>T and of Judaism in order to view it in the right liu'iit. In this picture are blended many elements from originally independent sources of which the history can only impcrfer'tly be traced. Gunkel has done a very great service m hi^ study of the history of the Babylonian myth of the creation of the world by the slaying or binding of the chaos lieast, the dragon of the deep, by the god of light. He has shown how in the OT certoinly (Is Sl^f- 27», Dn 7, etc.), and not improbably in Babylonia, this coemological myth became eschatotogical, the last things were to be like the first, the dragon was to rise in a new conflict against God and be again overcome before the new creation. He has also shown now this myth, Chough retaining features of its original sense, the conception of creation as the binding and confining of the ocean (c(. Pr. Man 'S ' who has bound the sea by the word of thy commandment ; who hast shut up the deep aiui sealed it by thv t«rrible and glorious name,' with Rev 91 20^), became, especially in its esrhatological use, a figure of the world- kingdom that opjiressed the people of God. 1 1« future assault would be literally by war, not ny tempest (see the union in Dn 71)- It is evident how perfect an ex])re88ion of this final fonn of the dragon-m>'th is contained in the words, ' the beast that thou sawest was, and is not ; and is about to come up out of the abyss, and to go into perdition ' (Rev l?**). But this leatls ns over to an idea not Babylonian In origin, that the gods of the nations are angels (demons) (Dt 4ie S23 LXX, Sir 17'*), and that these ongels of the nations are responsible for their sins acainst Israel. Daniel contains this idea in a developed form. Tbe lieasts which in ch. 7 suggest the chaos dragon in his late es^hatological and political form, give place in chs. 10-12 to angel princes of the nations whom Israel's prince, Michael, is to overtlirow. So also in the late apocalypse, Is 24-27, the Baby- Ionian dragon of the deep (here three monsters probably stiind for three nations) is to be slain by God in the Ia.'*t Judgment (27»): but before this (or parallel to ll)i8 the punisbmg of the ftngelic counterparts of eorthly kings, and, very significantly, their imprisonment for a time in the pit before their final