13'^ seems to indicate an edict actually in force or about to be issued, under which ordinary con- tracts of exchange should not be legal apart from vows of allegiance to the Emperor as a Divine person. This meant that Christians were excluded from the business of the world, and so from the world itself, and to 'John' it seemed justly a challenge of God's supremacy, which God and His Christ could not delay to take up. Quite apart from the peculiar genius of its author, the Apoca- lypse must have been to its first readers a message of comfort and power. Its appeal lay in its in- evitableness. In the situation as described, no message short of that contained in the Apocalypse could have seemed worthy of God or a ' testimony of Jesus Christ.' Prophecy is never in vacuo. God's word is in the mouth of His prophet because it is first in the events which His providence or- tlains or permits. It would be difficult to rate too highly the literary and spiritual genius of 'John,' yet the authoritativeness of his message for his own time and ours lies not in this but in its corre- spondence with a situation of crisis for the King- dom of God. So long as it is possible for a situa- tion to emerge in which we cannot obey man's law without dishonouring God's, the Apocalypse will be an authority ready for use in the hands of the godly.
(6) Apocalyptic and prophecy. — If this view is just, it contains the answer to two closely related fjuestions: (1) Is the writer, as he re^^resents himself, a 'companion in tribulation' of those to whom he writes (P), or does he, like other apoca- lyptists, including Daniel, write under the name of some great personage of the i)ast? (2) Is he really a proi)het as well as an apocalyptist ?
(1) The former question should be kept apart from the question whether the writer can reason- ably be identified with the Apostle John. There is nowhere in the book the slightest hint of a <laim to apostleship ; 21''* and 18'-" suggest rather tiiat the author distinguished himself from the 'holy apostles and prophets' and from the '12 apostles.' We do not know enough regarding the Churches of Asia in the 1st cent, to say witii confidence that only one who was as higlily esteemed as John the Apostle (Ram.say) or John tiie Presbyter (Bousset) could be confident that his message would come with authority to those
* The ' seven kitifja ' of IT^W- are the seven emperors — exclusive of the usurpers Galha, Otho, and Vitellius — from Anjrustus to Nero. The ' eit'hth that is of the seven '(v.H) is Domitian, con- sidered as Xero Hediviviis.
to whom it was addressed. On the other hand, it is more than possible, in view both of the liter- ary apocalyptic convention of pseudepigraphy and of the probability that concealment of the .author's name was an act of warrantable prudence, tliat ' John ' was not the autlior's real name, and that (almost by consequence) the banishment in Patmoa was, so far as he was concerned, fictitious. But the matter of real importance is not the question whether the names of person and place are fictitious ; it is the fact that — supposing them to have been fictitious — here the fiction ends. The writer is a Christian. He is in the same situation with those he addresses. He neither desires nor attempts to place himself in the distant past. The Christian Church has its own jH'ophets. Our author solemnly claims to be one of them, and the Church since the beginning of the 3rd cent, has taken him at his own estimate.*
(2) But is not an apocalyptist, ipso facto, only a pale shadow of a prophet ? Must not ' John ' be conceived, as regards inspiration, to stand to a speaking prophet, say of Ephesus, as ' Daniel ' stands to the real Daniel or to some prophet of the time of Nebuchadrezzar ? It seems to the present writer that the entire absence from the Apocalypse of such a fiction as that in Daniel, in which the past is in one part (the alleged writer's time) adorned with legendary features, and in a much greater part (the centuries between the Exile and the Syrian Persecution) is treated fictitiously as future, separates it longo inter callo from apocalyptic writings of the purely Jewish type, or even from Christian apocalypses like the Apoc. of Peter, which resemble the Jewish type in the feature of imper- sonation. It may be probable, though it is far from certain, that 'John' conceals his real name, but the suggestion that he tried to personate any one, or souglit any authority for his message other than what belonged to it as the testimony of Jesus given to himself, seems to be as destitute of proba- bility as of proof.
What, we may ask, is a Christian prophet but one who has an diroKaXv^ii (revelation) from God through Jesus Christ concerning matters pertain- ing to His Kingdom (1 Co W*^-, esp. v.^S; cf. Rev 19'") ? If a Christian could speak so as to bring home to his brethren the reality of the promised Kingdom, or so as to flash the light of the Divine judgment on the darkened conscience of an unbeliever, he had the xap'o'Ma or gift of prophecy (1 Co 1422--«.). yt. Paul himself must have pos- sessed the gift in an eminent degree. We judge so not simply from what is told in the Acts or from what he himself tells regarding the source from which he derived the contents and manner of his preaching or the directions necessary for his missionary journeys. We judge so rather from the correspondence existing between his claim to direct access to this source and the still operating influence of his personality upon the conscience and conduct of mankind. If it be said that St. Paul was a preacher, and ' John ' was, so far as we know, only a writer, it may be asked in reply : W^hat do we know of Paul the preacher that we do not learn best from his own writings? No com- panion of 'John ' has told us (as Luke did of Paul) how he preached, but surely we may say that no one could write as ' John ' does without being, under favourable conditions, a preacher, and that probably as much in pro])ortion of ' John's' Apoca- lypse as of St. Paul's Epistles might have been