The Pulpit Commentary — Revelation — Section 327

It was alnady decreed. The sentence had gone forth, and was but awaiting execution. 8. 1' had begun. An empire that had become the prey and prize of one successful general after another; that might be won and lost any day at the ea.price of bribed band11 of soldiers, had lost all stability, and was already "as a bowing wall and a totter- ing fence." 4. But chiefly because it was,o soon to be accomplished. To the quickened vision of the seer, the barbarian nations were already plunging over her borders, and wasting and destroying on every hand. Rome was to him as if already in the deadly grip of those fierce hordes who should one day crush out her life, The vision was so vivid to him that he spea.ka of it as actual, real, and present. And in all these senses the judgment of God is gone out against ungodly men, " Condemned already " is eur Lord's word for such; and "is fallen, is fallen," is St. John's, Oh for the quickened vision to make all this real to godly men, that they might labour and pray more in order to "snatch brands from the burning; " and to ungodly men, that they might "flee from the wrath. to come" J III. THI!: GROUNDS OF THIB AWJ!'UL JUDGMENT, It was no arbitrary sentence, nor one that had been hastily or without righteous reason pronounced. Yea, there had come to be imperative necessity for it, and it would have been unrighteous had it been with- held. 1. Rome had come to be one mass of corruption-. St. John adopts the prophetic style, and speaks of the "wine of her fornication," by which he means that she had come to" work," not "all uncleanness" aloue, but all manner of godless abomination besides, "with greediness;" as with greedy grip the drunkard grasps the wine.cup. Rome had become a" putrefying sore." Let 'l'acitus tell. 2. And she was th.e sedue#' of others. Holding the position she did, she could not but be a fountain of. influence for all cities and lands that came under her wide-reaching rule. And she had corrupted them all; .she had " made all nations drink of .the wine," eto. And he who branded for ever the name of Jeroboam the son of Nebat because he "made Israel to sin," has here again declared his wrath against all, whether nations or individuals, who do the like. And: 3, The cup ef Bin becomes the cup of wrath. Such is the Divine law. This is the meaning of the condensed sentence, "the wine of the wrath," ere. The wine of her sin, and the wine of God's wrath upon it, are drunk out of the same cup. " In the hand of the Lord there is a cup, and the wine is red , •• but the dregs thereof, all the wicked of the earth shall wring them out, and drink them" (Ps. Ix.xv. 8), "Our pleasant vices," Shakespeare tells us, become our scourge; and life is full of proof that BO it is. At the bottom of every cup of sin there is" wrath." Ah I what need have we all to offer continually the prayer," Give us a heart to love and dread U., and diligently to live after thy commandments" 1-S. C. Vere. 9-12.-" The moat awful threatening the Bible contains" (Bengel). Undoubt. edly it is so. It makes our flesh creep and our heart shudder as we read it. It is to be noted that these three angels (vers. 6, 8, 9), who "excel in strength," bear messages of increasing severity. The first bids us "fear." The second tells of the dread judgment upon Babylon, This third threatens all men everywhere with like and yet more Awful doom, if they " worship the beast." or "receive his mark." Now- l. WHAT . DOES ALL TBIB MEAN? 1. It seems to mean that the wngodJy dall ~ punished with incessant and unspeakable torments in hell-fire, ana that for m,er ana tver. '!'his is the doctrine that has been deduced from this passage again and again. It is one of the buttresses of the popular theology. It is always quoted in support of this doctrine, and is regarded as one of the chief of the proof-texts. But if it do teach this; we ask: (1) Would not the language be more clear? Who certainly knows what the two beasts, the first and second, stand for? Who can do more than guess, with more or less of probability, what St. John meant by them; much ·less what it was intended we, in our day, should understand by them? And what ill "the mark of the beast"? and how do men receive it "in their forehead," or their "hand"? We may think we understand all this, But can any one be sure? But consequences 80 awful 1111 are threatened here would not be told of in language 80 ambiguous. If we to-day be threatened with such doom, the offences that incur it will surely be set forth in words unmistakably plain, and not such as we find here. (2) May not temporal judgments be so described? May not the same language be useJ for something quite diiferent from what it is said this means? Yes, for Isaiah thus speaks of Edom (u.xiv. en. x,v. l-20.) THE REVELATION OF ST. JOIIN THE DIVINE. 867