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Eureka

AN EXPOSITION OF THE APOCALYPSE
Sixth Edition, 1915
By Dr. John Thomas (first edition written 1861)

 

 

Chapter 5

Section 2 Subsection 1b

The Scroll (continued)


 
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The book of Daniel is to the Apocalypse as the acorn to the oak. The latter is the mystery of Daniel’s prophecy symbolically revealed. This mystery of things he ministered he thought much upon, and sought to find out with great diligence, but without success; for he was informed that the mystery was hidden, and could not be penetrated until a time appointed.

As already intimated, Daniel saw a scroll, as indicated in the phrase "the words and seal the book," as well as John. He was told that "the words were closed up and sealed till the time of the end." Hence, these were to Daniel "a scroll at the right of Him seated upon the throne written within and on the outside, sealed up with seven seals." That closed and sealed against Daniel’s understanding was the mystery or secret of the words of the book.

But one might inquire, If the mystery were to be concealed "till the time of the end," in what sense can John’s apocalyptic scroll and seals be a revelation of the hidden wisdom of Daniel’s book, seeing that John’s age was not "the time of the end" -- a time which is only just now dawning upon the world? This we consider a very pertinent inquiry. In answer, the reader may be reminded, that the revelation to John was symbolical. He did not see the actual, but only the acted or dramatized events he describes. What he saw was a pictorial representation, as it were -- a speaking hieroglyphic signifying to his understanding things which in the time of the end shall all have become accomplished facts, so that, in this end "the vision shall speak, and not lie" (Hab. ii. 3). The Apocalypse in its word-painting is the unrolling to the understanding of the servants of the Deity the series of events that should be successively unfolded, and which in their time of the end consummation should manifest as an accomplished result "THE END OF THE MATTER" (Dan. vii. 28).

The scroll had to be unrolled and its seals loosed before the vision it contained could be read and perceived, or intelligibly comprehended, when it should "speak at the end." The speaking at the end truthfully, is what is styled in modern phrase the denouement, a word signifying the discovery of the plot, the unravelling or issue of the matter, termed in Daniel "the end of the matter." This denouement was revealed to him; but the unfolding of the particular series and succession of events thereunto leading, was not made known to him. He was informed in general terms, that the powers of the fourth beast dominion should make war upon and prevail against the saints until the Ancient of Days should come; and that then the saints should become a power mighty enough to destroy the fourth-beast system of powers; and to set up the kingdom of Deity. In the establishment of which as the great political fact of the age and generation, the denouement of God’s dealings with the nations all the time of their ascendancy over the saints, would be manifested. He was instructed that "the end of the matter" was to be a crisis elaborated providentially from antecedents evolved in the history of the fourth-beast nationalities; but what was the particular vein to be worked out in its several lodes to conduct to the main and terminable results, he did not "see." In dramatical representation, the spectators behold the unrolling of the author’s scroll, as the acting is in progress; but they have to wait till the end of the piece, the time of the end, for the dramatist’s conception to "speak and not lie." Unless they have read the play, or seen it acted before, they have to "wait for the end of the matter," ere they can tell how the matter will come out, or what the ingenious dramatist designed should be the end of the whole, or the issue of the plot. It was thus with Daniel and John. The end of the matter had been revealed to them both. They had read the denouement of the drama to result at the end from all its shifting scenes; but they had never seen nor read the play. The acting had not been revealed to them. In Daniel’s time the stage had not been prepared, nor the dramatis personae, the company of performers, collected and arranged in their several parts for the performance of the tragedy to be played. There was no fourth-beast dominion then; nor any saints who had "washed their robes, and made them white in the blood of the Lamb" (Apoc. vii. 14) -- to be prevailed against thereby; and without these important parties in the premises, the actual tragedy could not begin; nor could a representation or rehearsal of the performance have come with any enlightening effect upon Daniel’s mind, being ignorant as he was of the mystery afterwards revealed in the apostolic ministration of "the word."

But by the time that John had come to be an exile in Patmos, all this was changed. Daniel’s situation was no longer that of John and his brethren. The fourth-beast dominion was now upon the world’s stage; and, as the Little Horn, not then as yet decorated with "Eyes like the eyes of a man, and a mouth speaking great things," had "taken away the Daily, and had cast down the place of its sanctuary," and practised and prospered. Messiah the prince, though faultless, had been "cut off" by this horn; and by the teaching concerning his kingdom and name, a people composed of Israelites and Gentiles according to the flesh, had been developed as the seed of the great father of the faithful and "friend of God," by adoption through Jesus as the prince; and stood confessed of heaven before "the inhabiters of the earth and sea" -- the whole habitable -- as "THE ISRAEL OF GOD."

In these two hostile communities exist all the elements to be afterwards developed into the parties of the play. The Israel of God on the one side, and the Fourth Beast, on the other, contained the germs of the conflicting good and evil of the ages and generations from John’s day to the giving of "the kingdom, and dominion, and the greatness of the kingdom, under all of the heavens to the people of the saints of the Most High Ones, whose kingdom is the kingdom of Olahm (the hidden period), and all dominions shall serve and obey him;" which is "the end of the matter." While the apocalyptical tragedy was being rehearsed before John in Patmos, God’s Israel was already constituted of "two manner of people" -- they who walked after the flesh; and they who walked after the spirit, which is the truth. Out of the former were afterwards developed the worshippers of demons and of "idols of gold, and silver, and brass, and stone, and of wood" (Apoc. ix. 20): also, "the Mouth speaking great things and blasphemies (xiii. 5); the image of the beast; the drunken woman, and all the daughters of her prostitution, and abominations of the earth" (Apoc. xvii. 1-5). These all are the fruit of the Mystery of Iniquity that was at work in the mystical body of Christ, in the time of Paul and John. The apostolical epistles are full of protest against its insidious and corrupt working, which they clearly saw would "eat as doth a gangrene;" and therefore earnestly warned all who would be approved of God to have nothing to do with those who favored it (2 Tim. ii. 15-18; 2 John 10).

On the other hand, from the Israel of God who walked in the truth were developed in after ages and generations, "the souls under the altar slain for the word of God" (vi. 9); "the servants of the Deity seated in their foreheads;" the 144,000, or "holy nation," (1 Pet. ii. 9); the white-robed palm bearers (ch. vii); the temple of the Deity, the altar worshippers, and the holy city (xi. 1-2); the four and twenty elders, and the four living ones; the fugitive woman and the remnant of her seed (xii. 14,17); God’s name and tabernacle, and them that dwell in the heaven -- the saints (xiii. 6,7); the redeemed from the earth, the virgins, the first-fruits unto the Deity and the Lamb, faultless before the throne (xiv. 1-5); them who had gotten the victory over the beast, and over his image, and over the number of his name, having the harps of Deity (xv. 2); the kings of the east, who watch and keep their garments (xvi. 12,15); the called, and chosen and faithful with the Lamb in his wars (xvii. 14); the prophets and saints slain (xviii. 24); the Lamb’s wife arrayed in righteousness; and the squadrons of his power (xix. 7,8,14); them to whom judgment is given, the beheaded souls, who worshipped not the beast, nor his image, and who reign with Christ as the priests of Deity for a thousand years; the beloved city (xx. 4,6,9); the holy city, New Jerusalem, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband, the municipal aggregate of all written in the Lamb’s book of life (xxi. 2,27); whose foreheads are enstamped with the name of Deity and the Lamb (xxii. 4). These all constitute "the Israel of the Deity" upon whom Paul invoked "peace and mercy" (Gal. vi. 16); and for whose special information the apocalypse was rehearsed to John in Patmos; and who were, and are yet to enact a most conspicuous part in its public exhibition upon the platform of the habitable dominated temporarily by the fourth-beast system of powers, so dreadful and terrible to Daniel’s sight (Dan. vii. 7).

As already remarked above, the Israel of God and this Fourth Beast Dominion contained of old all the germs of the good and evil which have mingled in devouring conflict for the past eighteen hundred years; and which will continue occurrent till the victory which shall culminate in the blessing of all nations in Abraham and his seed. We have traced the germinal development of the "two manner of people" through the tragedy rehearsed to John. By examining the testimonies cited above, the reader will see how they diverged into an "enmity" that admits of no mitigation or compromise; but which apocalyptically results in the utter and final extermination of the Laodicean Apostasy from among the nations of the Fourth Beast where alone it has taken root. The reader will also see from the same testimonies that the apostasy generated in and evolved from the mystical body of Christ, or God’s Israel, is found in alliance with the "dreadful, terrible, and exceedingly strong" dominion of "the whole habitable," against "the remnant who keep the commandments of the Deity and have the testimony of Jesus Anointed;" and that the fate of the one is that also of the other -- the civil, military, and ecclesiastical constitution and institutions of "Christendom," which is the fourth-beast organization come to remediless perdition, as the result of the "judgment given to the saints."

In John’s day, then, this Fourth Beast was in the germinal phase of its development, Daniel saw it with many horns upon it; but neither he nor John were contemporary with them. The beast had arisen out of the Great Sea countries, and John was living under the dominion of its Sixth Head (xvii. 10); that is, under the rule of Rome Imperial. The beast had not then acquired horns; and it had not then become acquainted with that "god whom his fathers knew not ... that strange god" who was afterwards to be "acknowledged" by the Emperors, and by them "increased with glory" (Dan. xi. 38,39). This "god" had not appeared on the Roman Habitable then. John had no personal acquaintance with him; but in the apocalyptic rehearsal of what was in after ages to be publicly exhibited before the concourse of nations, he saw that he would appear and figure upon the blood-stained arena as the Image of the Beast -- an image resulting from a coalition of the Laodicean Apostasy with the Roman State.

In the apocalyptic rehearsal, then, John saw this pagan dominion under which he lived developed into the Man of Sin-Power. He beheld its birth coeval with a great war in the heaven of the Fourth Beast (xii. 5,7). He saw the development of the Ten Horns as the result of the Fourth Beast Dragon being compelled to yield a portion of his power, his throne, and great authority to certain incomers upon the habitable, who divided with the imperials the sovereignty of the earth (xiii. 1-4). He saw these new powers of the earth in alliance with a blasphemous power, under whose inspiration they would make war upon the saints, and overcome them. He saw, also, this persecuting power acquire great consistence, and become imperial. Daniel’s "Little Horn with Eyes and Mouth" rose up before him in the form of a beast coming out of the earth, having two horns as of a lamb, and speaking as a dragon. He saw the horn and mouth in this beast, and "the Eyes" in the image which the civil and military power would cause the people to worship upon pain of death (ch. xiii). He saw in this the Man of Sin-Power, begotten and born in previous centuries, developing into a "dreadful and terrible" tyranny, that would make the times perilous for the saints, and for all who, from any cause, would not do it homage. He perceived, also, that it would have the ascendancy for a long time; and that it would do after its will for forty-two months of years. This long period he knew would reach to the coming of the Ancient of Days, and that the Fourth Beast dominion would then be in its full and final manifestation. The Man of Sin-Power would then be in full fruition, and in its final form. It was rehearsed to Daniel in this form with other three dominions; and was afterwards apocalyptically rehearsed to John as a scarlet colored beast with eight heads, bearing as its rider a drunken prostitute. He saw in this the Man of Sin-Power in full maturity; and ready to contend with the Ancient of Days and his followers, "the called, chosen, and faithful," for the indefinite perpetuation of the Fourth Beast dominion "over all kindreds, and tongues, and nations" (ch. xvii and xiii. 7). But "the end of the matter" divinely purposed required the victory of the Woman’s Seed; and that the saints should possess "the kingdom and dominion, and the greatness of the kingdom under all of the heavens." This being the predetermination of the Deity, when the apocalyptic rehearsal had brought out the Sin-Power to the full, its judgment was forthwith represented to John as immediately consequent upon the manifestation of a great heaven-descended angel power upon earth. He saw that the judgment of the saints would fall with primary and especial violence upon the ecclesiastical element of the Fourth Beast (ch. xviii). Babylon the Great being thus abolished, he saw the civil power that had upheld her, and had caused all nations to bow their necks to her priestly yoke, subjected to relentless and exterminating war; the result of which was the total abolition of the Church and State of the Fourth Beast dominion. Consequent upon this, the Beast of the Sea, the Beast of the Earth, the Image of the Beast, and the False Prophet, the head thereof, are no longer found playing any part in the public affairs of the world. The all-conquering saints and the Dragon alone remain. John saw the Dragon chained in the bottomless profound. There was no binding of the others. They were destroyed; but not so the Dragon. This is shut up and imprisoned for a thousand years, and afterwards released preparatory to his destruction then. Identical with this was the consummation represented to Daniel in ch. vii. 11,12. There the Fourth Beast body politic is totally destroyed, while the lion, bear, and leopard nationalities are deprived of sovereignty by the saints, or bound for a season and a time, during which long period there is no power on earth to dispute its absolute possession by the SON OF MAN -- Jesus and his brethren. More than this was not deponed to Daniel. He was informed, indeed, that the saints should possess the kingdom ad-ahlmah, wead ahlam ahlmaiyah -- "during the hidden period, even for a hidden period of the hidden periods:" but what was to transpire in regard to the suppressed dominion of the lion, bear, and leopard, after the expiration of the "period of the periods," he did not see. It was reserved for the apocalyptic rehearsal to inform the servants of the Deity, that the lion, bear, and leopard dominion, should be "loosed a little season" after the expiry of the season and time period of their subjection to the saints; and should then renew their conflict with them, and so bring upon themselves swift and irremediable, and final destruction. "The end of the matter" with Daniel was the victorious establishment of the Millennial Kingdom of the Saints. Beyond this his vision did not penetrate. He knew nothing of the Son’s delivering up the kingdom to the Father as the result of a crisis culminating in the change of its constitution, the abolition of mediatorship, and the supercession of flesh and blood nature by spirit; so that all the dwellers upon earth shall be ho Theos ta panta en pasin, the Deity the all things in all -- DEITY MANIFESTED IN FLESH -- of which the glorified and anointed Jesus is now the type. This is the end of the matter rehearsed before John -- the apocalyptic denouement of the divine purpose conceived by the Allwise Intelligence before the foundation of the world.

 

 


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