the possibility of a blameless participation in a banquet, even in the idol-temple, he dissuades from it on the ground of its dangerous consequences to weak consciences, and as involving a formal recognition of the false worship which they had re- nounced at their baptism. “In the Epistle to the Romans we see the excess to which the scruples of the weaker brethren were carried, even to the pitch of abstaining altogether from animal food ; as, in the Nicolaitans of the Apocalyptic churches, we see the excess of the indifferentist party, who plunged with- out restraint into all the pollutions, moral as well as ceremon- ial, with which the heathen rites were accompanied” (Stanley, “On Corinthians”). “It may be noted as accounting for the stronger and more vehement language of the Apocalypse, con- sidered even as a simply human book, that the conditions of the case had altered. Christians and heathen were no longer dwelling together, as at Corinth, with comparatively slight in- terruption to their social intercourse, but were divided by a sharp line of demarcation. The eating of things sacrificed to idols was more and more a crucial test, involving a cowardly shrinking from the open confession of a Christian’s faith. Dis- ciples who sat at meat in the idol’s temple were making merry with those whose hands were red with the blood of their fel- low-worshippers, and whose lips had uttered blaspheming scoffs against the Holy Name ” (Plumptre).
In times of persecution, tasting the wine of the libations or eating meat offered to idols, was understood to signify recanta- tion of Christianity.
15. So. Even as Balak had Balaam for a false teacher, so hast thou the Nicolaitan teachers.
Nicolaitans. See on ver. 6. Which thing I hate. Omit.
16. I will make war (roAcunow). The words war and make war occur oftener in the Apocalypse than in any other book of the New Testament. ‘An eternal roll of thunder from the throne ” (Renan).
Vou, II1.—29