• 1 Co 729«. seems to the present writer an illustration rather than an exception.
or literature.* He has the definite belief that the last instrument of Antichrist is the Roman Imperial system, and that with the removal of the 'Great Whore' (19^)— the 'Babylon' which is Rome — especially the cult of the Emperor, the last obstacle to the glorious advent of the Kingdom will be taken away. It is true there is nothing in his general estimate of the situation of the worshippers of the true God, suflering from the Roman persecution, that might not have been conceived by ' Daniel ' or any other OT prophet. There is scarcely a detail in the wonderful lament of triumph over the fall of the Roman Babylon (ch. 18) that has not its close parallel in Isaiah and Jeremiah (for the details see Porter, op. cit. 267).
But what significance has such a fact other than that of illustrating, in general, the claim of Christianity to fulfil OT prophecy, and, in par- ticular, the claim of this Christian seer to be in the succession of the prophets (P 10"^- ig^" 22^^"-)t Once it is seen that it is the work of a Christian, and that every detail in it has to the author's own mind a significance, determined by his own attitude and that of his readers to the Messiah who was crucified (!"• 11^ 12^^), the book must be allowed to possess a unique value for edification both in itself and in reference to the place assigned it by Christian authority — that of closing the canonical record of revelation contained in the Bible.
* A good instance of the author's eclecticism, acting under control of spiritual insight, is his combination of an earthly and a heavenly view of the Consummation. The binding of Satan and the thousand years' reign of the martyred saints precedes the final destruction of the Antichristian power and the descent of the Heavenly City (ch. 20 ; cf. with chs. 21 and 22). Why does the prophet not close his book at 1910? It is the poorest conceival)le answer to saj* that he continues his text for literary reasons, having a desire to utilize traditional material that was too good to be neglected. But the reason may well be that, while the destruction of the colossal im- posture of the Roman Imperial cult is the last preliminar}' to the Consummation that comes within his definite conviction, a complex instinct, which we may consider part of his prophetic equipment, warns him against the danger of confounding definiteness of result with definiteness of time and manner. The large doings of God permit of fluctuation in detail, and the prophet is practical as well as inspired. One matter that genuinely concerned him as a prophet, and had concerned brother-prophets before him (cf. Dn 12iff-, En. 91i-ff-, Bar 40^, and, for a Christian example, 1 Co IS'-O".), was the question what special reward would be granted to those who had maintained their faithfulness to God at the cost of their lives. And here the traditional idea of a reign of the saints preliminary to the Final Consummation came to his aid. In En. 91i'-f- (cf. Bar 40^) we find a scheme according to which all human history, in- cluding the reign of the Jlessiah, is divided into heavenly weeks. In 4 Ezr. 728 the period of the reign of the Messiah is 400 years — a number whicli, as the Talmud {Sank. 99) explains, is obtained by combining Gn 15-^ with Ps 90^5. The 1000 years of our prophet would be obtained in a somewhat similar fashion bv combining Gn I'"'- (the 'day' of the Creation-narrative) \vith Ps 90'*. The 'day ' ( = 1000 years) is the rest-day of God's saints, who are in particular the martyrs. In the Jewish tradi- tion (cf . Jub. 4^0 and Secrets of Enoch 33if-) the seventh ' day ' was the reign of the Messiah. With 'John' it is the reign of the Messiah with His faithful mart3Ts, and of course neither they nor He die at the end of it, as in U Ezr. T^. Satan, however, is unbound and leads the powers of evil in a final assault upon the saints of the earth. He is overthrown and cast into the 'lake of fire' with the Beast and the False Prophet. Then follows the General Judgment, in which those whose names are not found in the ' book of life' are cast into the lake of fire, and the rest who are faithful join the saints of the Millennium in the final bliss. It is obvious that these details are not strictly reconcilable with those of the Apocalypse that ends at 19"', and again at 1921. Uut surely we may credit the prophet with being aware of the inconsistency. He handles his manifold material freely. What is important to him is not to reconcile discrepant details, but to express through them ideas of destiny that are worthy of God and His Messiah. And it was mani- festly important to him, as it was also, in part, to St. Paul, to ex))ri'ss the ideas : (1) that believers who died before the Advent sull'ered no disadvantage above others (1 Th 4'^'''- ; cf. Kev O^"'-) ; (2) that the earth needed to be prepared for the final glory by the prevailing presence in it of the saints (1 Co 15'2-'- b'^f- ; cf. Rev 20^"') ; (3) that there were special rewards for those who made special sacrifices, in particular the sacrifice of life, for the sake of the Kingdom (2 Ti 2iif- ; cf. Mk 102Siti-B, and passages in Rev. above cited).