Title: The Revelation of St. John the Divine
An interpretation
Author: A. H. Ames
Release date: November 6, 2023 [eBook #72047]
Language: English
Original publication: New York: Eaton & Mains Press, 1897
Credits: Richard Hulse and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive)
Transcriber’s Notes
The cover image was provided by the transcriber and is placed in the public domain.
Punctuation has been standardized.
This book was written in a period when many words had not become standardized in their spelling. Words may have multiple spelling variations or inconsistent hyphenation in the text. These have been left unchanged unless indicated with a Transcriber’s Note.
Index references have not been checked for accuracy.
The symbol ‘‡’ indicates the description in parenthesis has been added to an illustration. This may be needed if there is no caption or if the caption does not describe the image adequately.
Footnotes are identified in the text with a superscript number and are shown immediately below the paragraph in which they appear.
Transcriber’s Notes are used when making corrections to the text or to provide additional information for the modern reader. These notes are identified by ♦♠♥♣ symbols in the text and are shown immediately below the paragraph in which they appear.
THE
REVELATION OF ST. JOHN THE DIVINE
AN INTERPRETATION
BY
A. H. AMES, M.D., D.D.
NEW YORK: EATON & MAINS
CINCINNATI: CURTS & JENNINGS
Copyright by
EATON & MAINS,
1897.
Eaton & Mains Press,
150 Fifth Avenue, New York.
The essay which follows is based upon a conviction that the closing book of the canon of the New Testament, known as the Revelation of Saint John, presents the thoughts of that holy man and inspired apostle upon the subject of the kingdom of Christ, as derived by him from the Old Testament Scriptures and from the teachings of Christ or as drawn from direct revelations made to himself. The book presents a single theme and has a well-preserved unity.
With those theories of interpretation which would make of the book an epitome of history, either as confined to particular epochs or as a whole, and which presuppose its design to be the prediction of events, great or small, in the progress of the world or the Church, the writer of this essay is not in sympathy. It is mainly because of the vagaries and conceits to which these theories have opened the way, which have clouded rather than cleared the mysteries of the Apocalypse and been more promotive of strife than of salvation, that so many thoughtful and pious minds have been driven from the study of what is one of the most beautiful, as it is one of the most practical, parts of the word of God. How readily the coincidences, for such they are, which have been appealed to as verifications of these theories may be explained and accounted for will be shown in the course of the essay.
Questions of criticism or scholarship do not lie within the scope of the essay. It is assumed, not, however, without examination and reflection, that the Revelation is the work of John, the son of Zebedee, one of the twelve, and “the disciple whom Jesus loved.” It is also assumed that he was the author of the fourth gospel and of the epistles which bear his name.
Commentaries upon the Revelation have been so numerous that their titles would fill a volume. It is not likely that anything can be said concerning it which is entirely new and has not been somewhere set forth. The writer of this essay claims originality so far as that he has not seen the views here expressed elsewhere presented, although they may have appeared previously. It is not possible for him to say whence he has gathered the material which has grown into the essay, so as to make formal acknowledgment. Alford, Bengel, Hengstenberg, Wordsworth, The Speaker’s Commentary, Ellicott’s Commentary, The Expositor’s Bible have been consulted freely, and also The Symbolic Parables of the Apocalypse, published by T. and T. Clark. The best commentary upon the Revelation he has found to be the Scriptures themselves.
Washington, D. C.
Rules of Interpretation—The Structure of the Book—Reference to Old Testament—Emblems Interpreted by Light of Jewish Scriptures and Ritual—Particular Attention to Numbers
The Seven Churches of Asia, or the Kingdom as it Actually was in the Days of the Apostles and is Now
Fundamental Principles on Which the Kingdom is Based—Emblem of the Seals—Opening of the Seals—The Sealed Elect
The Means by which the Kingdom of Christ is Advanced—Natural Providences—The Two Witnesses, or the Supernatural Scriptures
The Foes of the Kingdom—The Dragon—First Wild Beast, or Spirit of Worldliness—Second Wild Beast, or Spirit of False Prophetism—Anticipations of Victory
The Counterfeit of the Kingdom, or the False Church—The Judgments of God—Vision of the Vials—Babylon and its Doom—Methods of Success Reiterated
Progressive Steps by Which the Ideal Kingdom is to be Realized—Restraints upon the Power of Satan—Outpouring of the Holy Spirit under the Emblem of Resurrection—Union of Christian Believers—Final Triumph over Barbarism under the Emblem of Gog and Magog
The Ideal of the Kingdom—Its Distinctive Features—The Central Principle of the Kingdom—Negative Characteristics—Fruits and Results
Rules of Interpretation
If the Revelation of Saint John has any right to a place in the canon of the New Testament, it is reasonable to presume that its intention was to conform to that general purpose for which all divinely inspired Scripture is said to be given, namely, to “be profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness: that the man of God may be perfect, thoroughly furnished unto all good works.”
What peculiarly distinguishes it is that it clothes spiritual truth with a garb of mystery which, by challenging investigation, stimulates inquiry; which affords to the mind that solves its obscurities the satisfaction always to be found in the discovery of the recondite and difficult; which throws around prose realities the pleasing charm of poetry and art; and which, by connecting material things with a divine revelation, and thus linking together nature and the supernatural, attests the unity of the universe in which we are placed and shows the world about us and human history to be full of the presence of God.
It would surely argue great presumption in any man to claim a perfect understanding of a book so marvelous as the Apocalypse, whose teachings are not for one age, but for all ages. Very confidently, however, it may be asserted that by the use of certain rules of interpretation many of its mysteries may be explained and its application to practical life and conduct be made evident. The reasonableness of these rules would be readily admitted if applied to any other part of holy writ; and hesitation to accept them here proceeds solely from that mistaken view of the design of the Revelation which isolates it from the rest of the sacred canon as something ♦anomalous and unique. So far is this from being the case that no book in the Bible can afford to stand by itself so little as the Apocalypse, inasmuch as there is no other into the fabric of which so much of the other Scriptures is intentionally woven. The impression which close study of it makes is that it was designed by its author to serve as a sacred clasp to bind together and hold in harmonious coherence the whole of God’s wonderful volume.
The principles of interpretation deserving special notice are four in number.
1. The structure of the book itself furnishes some guide to its interpretation.
The opening chapters comprise brief letters, seven in all, which the author is directed to write to seven churches of Asia, the number indicating, not that these comprehended all the churches in that region, but that in them were represented all phases of religious life. These letters set before us both the spiritual state and the environment of the churches, and are advisory, monitory, reproachful, or comforting as the cases demanded.
The closing chapters present us with a picture of the perfected Christian Church—a symbolical vision, incomparable in its exquisite beauty, of the complete and permanent triumph of the Gospel of Christ, in the individual heart and on the larger field of the world, over all opposing forces; the realization, in fact, on earth of the ideal kingdom of God made ready for the Lamb.
The most plausible suggestion, therefore, which presents itself is that the intermediate portion of the book is intended to present in its figures and symbols the means by which the last condition is to be reached from the earlier one, the unformed and fluctuating state of the beginning developed into the ripeness and perfection of the close, and that under the guise of metaphor, trope, and vision there are revealed to us the dangers which the Church of Christ must expect, the enemies it must subdue, the weapons by which victory must be achieved, the encouragements upon which it may rely, and, in short, the steps through which the immature and carnal must be led in order to reach up to the pure and perfect.
Nor is it with the Church at large that the warnings and counsels have alone to do. If “whatsoever things were written aforetime were written for our learning,” each individual disciple of Christ may find in this book a chart for his own life’s journey and have sufficient warning against the sunken rocks, the adverse tides, the dangerous headlands which are to be shunned, and which are here so clearly and plainly marked out for him that he may, in the close and careful study of the map, find equal profit and pleasure.
It is very important in this connection to note the statement of the writer in the first verse of the book, that his commission was “to show unto” the servants of God “things which must shortly come to pass.” It is only by a very forced construction of the words that they can be made to signify a prophecy whose fulfillment is to be delayed for long centuries indefinite in their number. The most natural construction surely is that the revelation intrusted to him is one of which the whole, and not a part only, is to find its application in the times in which he lived, or soon thereafter, and to continue applicable until the glorious result is attained of which the closing part speaks. And if we shall dismiss from our minds all prepossessions springing out from that view of the book which makes it a syllabus, or table of contents, of Christian history the force of this remark will more clearly appear.
2. Reference must constantly be made to the Old Testament.
This rule, which is of importance in order to understand any part of the New Testament, becomes of the highest necessity in any attempt to interpret the Revelation. The writer was evidently a diligent student of the older Scriptures, absorbing their images and emblems until they had become a part of himself. Much in his writings that at first seems obscure becomes plain when we put ourselves in his position and study the Scriptures, which were evidently in his thoughts.
The prophetical books of the Old Testament especially are to be studied. Between the relation in which the older prophets stood to the laws and institutions of Moses and that which the apostles of the New Testament dispensation sustained to the Lord Jesus Christ a strong similarity exists. Neither the one nor the other claimed to be originators or independent discoverers, but rather witnesses to truths already revealed, which they accepted as primary and fundamental facts. Into the clear understanding, indeed, of these they were enabled by divine inspiration to look more deeply than others could, and they were also supernaturally aided to draw them out into great principles, capable of application to human thought and conduct in the shaping of individual and national life and practice. Thus, naturally and by sympathy of condition, the later writers found themselves led into careful and profound study of their predecessors. The prophecies of Daniel and Zechariah deserve to be especially consulted. Written, as they were, at or near the time of the captivity of Judah, they had peculiar interest for one who was himself an exile for the truth. Some of the imagery of the Revelation is drawn from the glowing poetry of Isaiah. And almost the entire Book of Joel has been worked into the Apocalypse.
But of all helps to an understanding of the Revelation the most fruitful is a close and careful comparison with the Book of Ezekiel; especially is this the case in reference to the closing chapters of both. Between the authors of these two works there were striking similarities of character and condition. But a more powerful bond of union is found in the fact that both of them were preëminently prophets of the Holy Spirit, seeming to have reached truer and profounder views of his work in the economy of redemption than any predecessors in their separate dispensations. Isaiah and Paul wrote of Christ and his Church; but if we wish to learn the fullest development of the office of the Holy Ghost we must turn to the pages of Ezekiel and John.
In addition to the Old Testament references, the prophetical discourses of our Lord uttered near the close of his ministry and recorded in the synoptical gospels will throw much light on the Book of Revelation. The omission of these from the gospel of John may be accounted for by the fact that in the Revelation the apostle had made such large use of them. The important prediction of Paul concerning the man of sin, found in 2 Thessalonians ii, must also be compared with those of John.
3. The emblems and symbols of the Revelation must be interpreted by the light of the Jewish Scriptures and ritual.
This, indeed, follows as a corollary form the preceding rule, but is of so much importance as to deserve special mention. Sometimes a word or a figure of speech or the connections of a sentence or a passing allusion to some sacrificial service will afford a clew to what at the time was in the mind of the writer. Inasmuch as he was a Jew, “taught according to the perfect manner of the law of the fathers,” familiar with the Scriptures, traditions, usages, and history of his religion, his interpretation of symbols and emblems would naturally be such as would occur to the mind of a Jew. We must place ourselves as near as possible to his standpoint. Yet, as he was also an inspired apostle of the Lord Jesus Christ, we must be prepared to concede that he read deeper into these mysteries than his fellows did and was able to import into them a richer meaning.
4. Particular attention must be given to the numbers found in the book.
Much that is fanciful and extravagant has, it must be conceded, been written on this subject, and to many persons any discussion of it is distasteful. Yet it is certain, as the Wisdom of Solomon says, that God has “ordered all things in measure and number and weight.” Otherwise there could be no such thing as exact science. Truths lie veiled in figures, for these represent fixed principles and plans in the divine mind. As a general truth, it may be stated that the ideas expressed by numbers, not only in this book, but throughout the Bible, whenever these are used symbolically, are those of fullness, exactness, and perfection, on one hand, or deficiency, incompleteness, and imperfection, on the other.
The numbers which figure most largely in symbolism are seven, twelve, six, and three and a half.
Seven is called the sacred number, and seems to express the idea of perfection or fullness to the highest degree and in the most unlimited sense. As seven days make a complete week, whole and entire, without redundancy or deficiency, so that to which the number seven is attached must be taken as perfect, fully developed, as a complete whole. The expressions “seven spirits,” “seven seals,” “seven trumpets,” etc., imply that what they represent must be taken as entire, with no possible capacities lying in them unexhausted.
Twelve, also, signifies completeness; but its use and application are more restricted. It is usually connected with the Church of God, and possibly has some special reference to it. Thus there are twelve patriarchs, twelve apostles, twelve foundations to the holy city. As the number is formed by the multiplication of three, representing the Trinity, and four, representing the world with its quarters, it conveys the thought of universality as the assured destiny of the Church.
Six is, also, as a symbol, connected with the Church; but, both because it is less than seven, and only the half of twelve, has a sinister significance. It represents the malign and baleful influences which corrupt and disintegrate the Church, shearing it of its power, limiting and obstructing its mission, and leaving it incomplete, defective, and corrupt.
Three and a half is a number having special signification and requiring particular investigation. A correct appreciation of its meaning will throw light upon some of the most obscure portions of the Apocalypse.
It occurs—and is, indeed, the only number of which this may be said—in various forms. Since three and a half years comprise forty-two months, and since forty-two months of thirty days each (the usual prophetical computation) equal twelve hundred and sixty days, we may take these three forms, three and a half, forty-two, and twelve hundred and sixty, as equivalent expressions. So, also, the expression, “a time, times, and the dividing of times” (1 + 2 + ½ = 3½), is probably but another form of this number. That some law governs the choice of these various forms is probable; but what, it is does not appear.
Since three and a half falls short of seven, it designates incompleteness. But, inasmuch as it is the exact half of seven (in this differing from six), it signifies an incompleteness which has, so to speak, a completeness of its own—that is, an incompleteness which is not anomalous and irregular, such as would be expressed by six, but one which is, by the appointment of God or as a result of its own nature, intended to be such. Any period of time or epoch in human history which has prescribed and well-marked limits or boundaries, any part of the plan of Providence which has a specified, but only temporary and partial purpose as related to the whole course and complete plan of the divine Being, is always designated by one or the other of the forms of this number.
Judaism, for instance, answered these conditions. It was a providentially ordered dispensation, but with a specific and limited object; fulfilling a definite, but not the complete purpose of Providence; a stage in the movement of humanity toward the kingdom of God, but not itself the realization of that kingdom; a type which needed an antitype to round it out, and throughout which ran the marks that proved it to be only temporary and preparatory to a higher dispensation into which it was to blossom. It was “a schoolmaster to bring us unto Christ.” Its glory was something which was “to be done away,” and consequently falls short of “that which remaineth.” And it reached the “fullness” of its “time” when “God sent forth his Son, made of a woman, made under the law, to redeem them that were under the law, that we might receive the adoption of sons.” And it will be found that whenever Judaism is symbolized by a number in the Book of Revelation, it is designated by one of the allotropic forms of three and a half.¹
So, likewise, Gentilism, to which a definite and distinct character or purpose is attributed, both by our Lord (Luke xxi, 24) and by Saint Paul (Romans xi, 25), but which, when severed from its Jewish antecedents, has the like features of incompleteness and deficiency, would be symbolically expressed by some form of the same number.¹
So generally accepted seems to have been this symbolical use of numbers that it appears even in such pure and simple prose as the gospels. The evangelist Matthew, in recording the genealogy of our Lord, divides the period between Abraham and Christ into three cycles with fourteen generations in each, or forty-two in all. This period is exactly coeval with Judaism as a distinct dispensation; and forty-two is, as we have seen, one of the interchangeable forms of the number three and a half. Inasmuch as the actual number of generations was, as is generally agreed, more than forty-two, and some principle of accommodation must have controlled the evangelist in choosing it, we have a right to conjecture that the symbolism was so well established that no erroneous impression would be conveyed.
Using these rules of interpretation as a guide, it will be found that many, if not most of the obscurities which have made this book so perplexing and incomprehensible will be removed. A unity of purpose will be seen pervading it. It will no longer appear anomalous and outré, but harmonious with the rest of the oracles of God; a book for the perusal of every individual believer, no matter how simple and unlearned he may be; having direct reference to his heart-experience and his moral conduct; a vade mecum for the journey of life through whose aid he may safely encounter the dangers and surely overcome the hindrances he may meet.
The great theme which the inspired writer and apostle here sets before us is the mediatorial kingdom of our Lord Jesus Christ. The principles which lie at the basis of that kingdom—the oppositions, external and internal, to its beginning and completion, the agencies, divine and human, upon which reliance must be placed to achieve success, its superiority to and triumph over all hostile forces, and all these both in the heart of each individual Christian and in that aggregation of Christians which we call the Church—are here delineated as they were revealed to Saint John.
The theories which make of this book an anticipation of history, and which find in the events of the last nineteen centuries continued fulfillments of its predictions, or which confine those fulfillments to the periods either near the primitive age or near the future and final scenes of the drama of time are regarded as being not wholly erroneous, but incomplete and partial.
That the great purposes of divine Providence are continually finding their fulfillment in the history of men and nations is a truth not confined to this book, but spread throughout all the sacred Scriptures. The laws of the divine administration are very exact; they can be neither obeyed nor disregarded without the necessary accompaniments of legitimate and appointed consequences. There is no improbability at all that moral and spiritual truths may have their processes and cycles of development, just as natural things have their seasons and times of maturity. Whether the events that have occurred, the organized bodies, secular or religious, that have appeared on the field of the world, were in the mind of the apostle as he wrote is a question neither affirmed nor denied. What is meant to be said is that the Revelation does more than merely predict results. It goes down into the profound region of causes and reveals the continuity of the plans of the divine Being. However ingenious or plausible, therefore, the explanations put upon the prophecies of this book by the theories spoken of above, it is not confined to them. As long as the world lasts there will be, in every age and in the experience of every believer, a fulfillment of the truths here set forth. Its warnings and comforts will never be out of date. Its promises and its threats are alike imperishable, for they are a part of that “word of our God” which “shall stand forever.”
A definition of the phrase “kingdom of Christ” is nowhere attempted in the Revelation. It was not needed in an age when the theme was the staple of preaching and teaching. To show that it must not be confounded with the visible Church was the purpose of the epistles to the churches of Asia with which the Apocalypse begins. The fundamental principle upon which the kingdom is founded, the universal sovereignty of Christ based upon his redemptive work, is taught under the emblem of the seals. The writer then advances to the instrumentalities, natural and supernatural, by means of which the kingdom is to be brought to its consummation. The antagonisms which the kingdom must encounter from foes without and within are next plainly revealed, and, lest the revelation may cause discouragement, prophecies of sure and final victory mingle with warnings. The retributive resources of the kingdom, the just judgments which fall upon its foes, and especially upon the false and counterfeit Church, are taught under the emblem of the vials. The next section discloses to us the stages of progress through which the kingdom ascends to its complete establishment, and the signs by which we may test its advance or detect its decline. And finally, with that glowing picture of the ideal kingdom as it shall be realized on earth when the Galilean shall have conquered, a picture so beautiful that our highest conceptions of heaven seem embodied in it, the divine seer closes his rapturous vision.
Revelation of Saint John the Divine
PART I
The Seven Churches of Asia, or, the Kingdom as it Actually was in the Days of the Apostles and is now
The chapters which contain the epistles to the churches of Asia need not detain us long; not that they are devoid of interest, but because anything like a commentary upon the text lies outside the scope and design of this essay, whose purpose is to interpret the general intent of the book itself.
The value of these letters to us lies in the pictures presented in them of the religious state of the churches to which they were addressed, and which doubtless were representative of the Christian world in the days of the writer. The reading of them will dispel any illusion in which we may have indulged as to the superiority of the apostolical age over subsequent ones, and will shatter any hypothesis we may have formed that primitive Christianity was anything like Utopia. The condition of the churches which they reveal to us was one in which doubt and faith, loyalty and declension, purity and worldliness, evil and good were interspersed in varying proportions. The tares had already begun to grow with the wheat.
And a moment’s reflection will convince us that no other result could reasonably be expected. Divine grace does not obliterate human nature, and its operations are always in accordance with rule. The regeneration of a soul is not synonymous with its entire sanctification. Growth is an invariable accompaniment of life. It would have been a new and altogether anomalous state of things if the average of conduct attained by converts from Jewish and pagan standards of thought and morals had equaled that to which we may aspire in whom centuries of training in the family, the State, and the Church have created a Christian consciousness. Fervor and zeal the early disciples unquestionably had, but with sad mixture of inconsistency, inexperience, and weakness.
It has always seemed hard for Christians to comprehend and fully believe the promise which our Lord gave to the Church through the apostles, that the Holy Ghost, when he should come, should “abide” with it “forever.” And this abiding presence throughout all ages of the Spirit of truth is not to be in partial or transient manifestation, but in all the fullness of his divine offices. And attention must be called to the fact that John, in unfolding the processes and forces by which the kingdom of Christ is to be brought to its triumphant completeness, points us at the beginning of his prophecy (Revelation iv, 5) to the seven spirits of God “burning before the throne,” as if to impress upon us the perfection of degree in which the Holy Spirit gives himself to this work. This does not mean that there is monotonous identity in the modes of his manifestation, or that the work that he does is the same in kind with that which he has done in the past. We are expressly told that “there are diversities of gifts, but the same spirit. And there are diversities of administrations, but the same Lord. And there are diversities of operations, but it is the same God that worketh all in all.” Some things which God does he never repeats. His special presence or work at some periods and in some things does not imply that he is any the less, while not in the same special way, present at all times and in all things.
“In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.” That was done once for all. From that period up to this time, indeed, the “Father worketh;” but it is not as Creator, but as Providence, developing and evolving from that beginning the possibilities that lay in it. What we call science is the record of this development, aiming only at the accurate presentation of the facts of providence and the adaptation of them to human needs and destiny. Nature is the terminus ad quem toward which discovery and invention tend, not the terminus a quo from which they start. Progress in them does not mean adding anything to nature or superseding it or leaving it behind and moving to something beyond it, but merely approaching closer to it, bringing us to better knowledge of and fuller acquaintance with it.
So, likewise, that inspiration of the Holy Ghost by which holy men of God were moved to speak and write what was specially revealed to them is never to be repeated. The lines along which and the limits within which the Christian Church is to be led were laid down once for all, as those of nature also were. The work of the Spirit now is that of a Providence to bring to realization the ideal then foreshadowed; and in doing this he has divine freedom to breathe where and when he listeth. Pentecost was the commencement of a process of which the closing chapters of the Revelation disclose the completion. And in order to attain this end the perpetual presence and indwelling of the Holy Spirit are promised in all their richness and perfection, but in accordance with the laws of human nature and with constant increments of knowledge and power.
It is vain, therefore, to claim commanding authority for any ceremony, formula, or organization on the ground that it corresponds with primitive Christianity. The apostles never felt themselves bound to that first sketch of the Church which they drew at Pentecost, as if this were among the things supernaturally revealed; but they modified and revised it whenever they could say, “It seemed good to the Holy Ghost and to us.” Nor have we any reason to believe that the process of evolution which continued throughout their lives ended therewith. The Holy Spirit did not then cease his work of guidance and inspiration. That is the truest and most apostolical Christianity which, like John, being “in the Spirit on the Lord’s day,” holds itself ever ready to hear and obey the “great voice, as of a trumpet,” behind and above it.
And this is the lesson we are to learn from the seven epistles to the churches of Asia. They are the record of the beginning of the kingdom of Christ, repeated in the conversion and regeneration of every individual Christian. They show the point of departure from which progress is to be made toward the consummation and perfection of the ideal. The Christian world as it was then, with its graces and its faults, is disclosed to us. The apostle, with his clearer eye, was able to look below the facts and recognize the principles struggling for the ascendency; and, using these facts as his data, he drew from them a prophecy of the development of the kingdom of Christ of marvelous interest and instruction for all subsequent ages. Nor is there a single force, friendly or hostile to the kingdom, which does not appear in the warnings or encouragements he is directed to write to these infant churches. Whoever will take the sketch of the kingdom as it actually appeared to the eye of John, and contrast it with the culmination of the process so exquisitely pictured in the last two chapters of the Apocalypse, will have some conception of the field over which he must travel if he would “come in the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ.”