[336] Ver. 11.
[337] Dan. vii. 2-8.
[338] Chap. xiii. 3, A.V.
[339] Chap. xiii. 3, R.V.
[340] Chap. v. 6.
[341] Heb. ii. 14.
[342] Chap. xii. 12.
[343] Vers. 3, 4.
[344] Ver. 7.
[345] Ver. 8.
[346] Ver. 5.
[347] Comp. p. 175.
[348] Ps. cxiii. 5; Isa. xl. 25, xlvi. 3, 5.
[349] Ver. 6.
[350] John i. 14; Rev. vii. 15.
[351] 1 Cor. ii. 12. Comp. Gal. vi. 14.
[352] James iv. 4.
[353] 1 John ii. 15, 16.
[354] John xiv. 30; xvi. 33; xvii. 15, 16.
[355] Eph. vi. 12.
[356] 2 Thess. i. 6, 7.
[357] Ps. cxlvii. 19.
[358] Matt. vii. 15.
[359] Acts xx. 29.
[360] Vers. 12, 15.
[361] Matt. xxiv. 24.
[362] 2 Thess. ii. 9, 10.
[363] Comp. chaps. xvi. 13; xix. 20; xx. 10.
[364] 1 John iv. 1.
[365] Fairbairn, _On Prophecy_, p. 328.
[366] John xix. 12.
[367] Matt. vi. 23.
[368] Luke xiv. 34, 35.
[369] _The Revelation of St. John: Baird Lectures published by Macmillan and Co._, second edition, p. 142, etc., 319, etc.
[370] Comp. chaps. iii. 12; xiv. 1; ii. 17.
[371] Chap. ii. 17. Comp. John i. 31; iv. 32.
[372] Dan. vii. 8.
[373] Comp. 1 John ii. 18.
[374] 2 Thess. ii. 8.
_THE LAMB ON THE MOUNT ZION AND THE HARVEST AND VINTAGE OF THE WORLD._
REV. xiv.
The twelfth and thirteenth chapters of this book were designed to set before us a picture of the three great enemies of the Church of Christ. We have been told of the dragon, the principle and root of all the evil, whether inward or outward, from which that Church suffers. He is the first enemy. We have been further told of the first beast, of that power or prince of the world to whom the dragon has committed his authority. He is the second enemy. Lastly, we have been told of that false spirit of religion which unites itself to the world, and which, even more opposed than the world itself to the unworldly spirit of Christianity, makes the relation of God's children to the world worse than it might otherwise have been. The picture thus presented is in the highest degree fitted to depress and to discourage. The thought more especially of faithlessness in the Church fills the heart with sorrow. The saddest feature in the sufferings of Jesus was that He was "wounded in the house of His friends;" and there is a greater than ordinary depth of pathos in the words with which the beloved disciple draws to a close his record of his Master's struggle with the Jews: "These things spake Jesus; and He departed, and was hidden from them. But though He had done so many signs before them, yet they believed not on Him: that the word of Isaiah the prophet might be fulfilled, which he spake, Lord, who hath believed our report? and to whom hath the arm of the Lord been revealed?"[375]
Even then, however, it was not wholly darkness and defeat, for the Evangelist immediately adds, "Nevertheless even of the rulers many believed on Him;" and he closes the struggle with the words of calm self-confidence on the part of Jesus, "The things therefore which I speak, even as the Father hath said unto Me, so I speak."[376] Thus also is it here, and we pass from the dark spectacle on which our eyes have rested to a scene of heavenly light, and beauty, and repose. The reader may indeed at first imagine that the symmetry of structure which has been pointed out as a characteristic of the Apocalypse is not preserved by the arrangement of its parts in the present instance. We are about to meet in the following chapter the third and last series of plagues; and we might perhaps expect that the consolatory visions contained in this chapter ought to have found a place between the sixth and seventh Bowls, just as the consolatory visions of chap. vii. and of chaps. x. and xi. found their place between the sixth and seventh Seals and the sixth and seventh Trumpets. Instead of this the seventh Bowl, at chap. xv. 17, immediately follows the sixth, at ver. 12 of the same chapter; and the visions of encouragement contained in the chapter before us precede all the Bowls. The explanation may be that the Bowls are the last and highest series of judgments, and that when they begin there can be no more pause. One plague must rush upon another till the end is reached. The final judgments brook neither interruption nor delay.