Last Updated on : Saturday, November 22, 2014 |
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Eureka AN EXPOSITION OF THE APOCALYPSE |
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Chapter 7 Section 11 "After these Things." |
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The eighth verse of ch. vii concludes the section which treats of the sealing; and the ninth verse begins a new section of the prophecy, yet not unconnected with the former, with the words meta tauta, which in the Common Version are inaccurately rendered "after this." The correct translation is "after these things." It is the same phrase with which the chapter opens; and there it is properly rendered; but why it is not similarly given in ver. 9, is not easy to divine. The reader is referred to ch. vii. 9, at the beginning of our chapter. There he will see in ver. 9 that John says, he saw "a great multitude" all of them assembled in a general convention before the Lamb; or, as Paul expresses it in 2 Thess. ii. 1, "our gathering together unto our Lord Jesus Christ," as "the Glorious and Fearful Name, YAHWEH ELOHIM" (Deut. xxviii. 58). The multitude, John says, no one is competent to compute. It is the multitude of "the redeemed from among men, the first-fruits unto the Deity and to the Lamb" (xiv. 4) the incorruptible and deathless seed promised to Abraham, who should be countless as the stars (Gen. xv. 5). This human incompetency for the calculation shows that the number 144,000 is not the real, but only the representative, number of the redeemed. Every saved individual of the unknown number redeemed will be one of the 144,000 sealed ones; he will be an element of the 144 cubits; which embrace within their limits the 144,000 furlongs; for these are the square of the root within which the innumerable multitude is enclosed. "After these things;" but how long after the sealing
in the days of "Donatus the Great," till A.D. 395,
before what John saw in vision, shall be seen in fact? The
answer to this question is not here expressed in time how
long. The time when is indicated by certain characteristics
of the great multitude beheld. These are signified by the
words, "having been clothed with white robes, and palms
in their hands." The word clothed is in the perfect participle
passive, showing that when they shall be seen in fact, in
the palm-bearing attitude, they will have been raised to the
divine nature, as Christ now is. This is the pure, incorruptible,
and spotless, white robe which they receive who, in a doctrinal
and moral sense, have, in the present state, "washed
their robes, and made them white in the blood of the Lamb." The
scene is postadventual and postresurrectional; and furthermore,
it belongs to the epoch when the resurrected shall celebrate
their first Feast of Tabernacles. This is indicated by their
having "palms in their hands;" for palm-bearing
belongs to the celebration of that festival in type and antitype.
Let us look, then, for a little at the Feast of Tabernacles
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