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Eureka

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

 

 

Chapter 14

 

4. The New Song


 
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"No one was able to learn the song except the 144,000 who had been redeemed from the earth".

The personal redemption of these thousands had been completed before they appeared on Mount Zion. They had recently emerged from the dust of death; and had passed through the ordeal of judgment; and being afterwards transformed, and made like to the King of Glory' by the quickening energy of his power, they were prepared truthfully to describe themselves in a song, which no one could possibly sing, who had not been the subject of the like condition.

The song they will sing on Zion is recorded in ch. 5:9. In this place, it says, "They sung a new song, saying, Thou art worthy to take the scroll, and to open the seals thereof: for thou wast slain; and hast redeemed us for the Deity by thy blood out of every' kindred, and tongue, and people, and nation; and hast made us (the Four Living Ones full of eyes, and the twenty four elders) for our Deity kings and priests: and we shall reign on the earth." The Angels cannot sing this song. How could they address Jesus, and say to him, "thou hast redeemed us?" Neither can they sing, that they shall "reign upon the earth," for they assuredly never will. Nor can any of the worshippers of the Beast Sing this song; for they do not belong to the white robed multitude, whose garments are whitened in the blood of the Lamb: on the contrary', they are those whose names are not written in his scroll of life from the foundation of the world; and are robed in a scarlet colored vesture, dyed red in the blood of the saints. None such can "learn that song. "They have not been taught it by the Father, who hath given them over to their strong delusions. "No man cometh unto Me," saith Jesus, "except the Father who hath sent me draw him; and I will raise him up at the last day. It is written in the prophets, And they shall be all taught of the Deity. Every' man therefore that hath heard, and hath learned of the Father, cometh unto me" (John 6:44). These can learn the song; for the Father teaches it to all His true disciples, when He writes His new name upon them; and they Sing it, when He plays upon them as His harps. "The dead know not any thing; and there is no knowledge in the grave" (Ecc. 9:5,10). Whence, then, can the 144,000 harps give forth the melody and sentiment of the song, but from the Eternal Spirit who "brings all things to their remembrance;" and this he does in writing the Father's Name in their foreheads. After he has developed them corporeally from the dust, he flashes upon them the knowledge of a previous state, together with the knowledge of what shall be hereafter. Thus they are taught and made conscious of a previous existence. But for the operation of the Eternal Spirit in writing his name upon their new cerebral organization, they would have no more consciousness of the past, or of any antecedents therein, than Adam when he first opened his eyes upon the light. Unless the Spirit impress upon them the knowledge, they would be con-scious only of what present sensation could impart - of this, and no more. Take, for example, a man, and call him Paul. Let him be the same Paul of whom we read in the Acts. Let him die, and become what he is (if we may say "he is," of one who has no existence). Of what was once called Paul there remains a few pounds of dust. And this is all that remains of the 144,000 not at present alive upon the earth. Hence, individually or personally they are all nonentities. Dust, though once a component of intelligent beings, retains no knowledge. "Can the dust praise thee can it declare thy truth?" There is no profit in dust for praise or truth, apart from the operation of the Eternal Spirit It retains no trace of former personal identity. From the few pounds of dust left to Paul the Creator could form a Lion. When he had given the creature life, would it have the consciousness of the apostle? Would it be able to sing the song of redemption? If personal identity resided in the dust as dust, it might; but the supposition is absurd: Of men, it is said, "the Deity remembereth that they are but flesh, a wind that passeth away, and COMETH NOT AGAIN". Where is the personal identity when flesh has thus passed away? All personality is dissolved. The mere natural man perceives the difficulty; and has therefore invented the clumsy theory of inherent immortality for the perpetuation of personal identity in a future state. He differs from the Spirit, and believes, that the dead know more than the living; and that they are now singing the song of redemption before the throne! But the Scripture shows clearly, that man has no immortal consciousness; and that if he do not understand the truth, he is as the beasts that perish (Psa. 49:12,20). What provision, then, has been provided by the Creator for the reproduction of the non-existent Paul and his companions in nothingness? The creation of 144,000 (not less, but number-less more) living bodies from the dust; and stamping upon their foreheads, as with a seal, what is already on record, not in the memory of disembodied souls, but in the mind of the Eternal Father. This is where the personal consciousness of the past comes from, the Father's Name written in the forehead, not with ink, but with the Spirit of the living God in fleshy tables of the heart (2 Cor. 3:3): 50 that whosoever is so written upon after creation from dust, is, in the creative operation, taught to sing the song of redemption by inspiration. The apostles who listened to the discourses of Jesus remembered little, and understood less; but the Eternal Spirit, who discoursed through Jesus, remedied this defect by afterwards bringing all things to their remembrance, opening their understandings and guiding them into all the truth (Luke 24:45; John 14:26; 16:13). In this operation, their consciousness of what Jesus really taught, was stamped or written upon the fleshy tablets of their hearts. What they had forgotten and did not understand, was not lost. It was retained in the Spirit's, in the Father's own mind, Who afterwards photographed in their foreheads what he had said. Suppose the apostles had all died with Jesus, and, like him, while dead, came to know nothing; and suppose after being dead, they were brought to life on the third day, where was their remembrance of all things to come from? When people fall into a trance they forget every thing, even the letters of the alphabet; and have to recover knowledge by the slow process of ordinary tuition. How total and complete, then, must be the oblivion of death; and how impossible the consciousness of the past, unless He who restores to life, also restamp or rewrite the "New Man," or "New Creature," formed by the Word in the old body of the present state, upon the new body of the future. And this He does; not by causing the newly created being to pass through the experience of the past again; but, by an instantaneous transfer of what exists in His own mind to theirs.

Eighteen hundred years ago, the Father-Spirit said, I am the way, the truth, the resurrection, and the life. He affirms this of Himself. The truth in a man by faith, is Christ in him. When the man dies the truth and its personal developments remain with the Father, while the man, as flesh, is "a wind that passeth away, and cometh not again". But, though it cometh not again, the truth in its particular personal identity, whether called by the name Paul, or any other name, does come again. The Father being the resurrection as well as the truth, reproduces from Himself the personally developed truth, named Paul in a former state. Here-produces it in a newly created body. In view of the statement affirmed by John the Baptizer, it is immaterial whether that body be made of the dust to which Paul is reduced, or of some other crude matter; for, if of stones the Deity can raise up children to Abraham (Matt. 3:9) He can as easy reproduce Paul from one kind of material as another. Paul sleeps "in God the Father and in the Lord Jesus Christ". In this sense, he may be said to be "with Christ" even now. He sleeps in Christ the Resurrection - in Christ the Sun of Righteousness. When this Sun shines forth with healing in his beams, Paul and the 144,000 will be the embodied emanations of these beams. They will be hoi basileis ton apo anatolon heliou - the Kings which (are) risings from a Sun (Apoc. 16:12). They no longer sleep. Every individual is a risingĀ  the reproduction of a former character in a new body; the character, and not the body, constituting the personal identity. The body is of the earth, the writing upon it, from heaven. In the finishing of this, the body is transfigured in the twinkling of an eye; and from an earthy body, it is changed into the likeness of the Quickening Spirit, by which the redemption celebrated in the song is made complete.

Here is the acquisition of knowledge in the same way as the apostles acquired the power, or faculty, of setting forth the wonderful works of Deity in languages they knew nothing about. It will be a Pentecostian display of omnipotence - 144,000 "first fruits unto the Deity and the Lamb" newly created from the dust, singing the song of their redemption from the earth. They sing the song thus "learned" before their conflict with the Beast and his Image. This is intimated by the prophetic declaration "We shall reign on the earth." This they cannot do so long as the Beast of the Earth is unsubdued. Their reign as "kings and priests" is incompatible with the existence or ascendancy of the Latin Kingdom. If in the song they sing, they said, we do reign upon the earth, we should know that the scene on Mount Zion was not Pentecostian, and inaugural; but palm-bearing and victorious. As conquerors of the nations, they stand upon the crystal-sea before the throne, and sing the song of Moses and the Lamb (ch. 4:6; 15:2). They will then have subdued their enemies. But, on Mount Zion is their induction into office with right royal solemnity, preparatory to their executing the judgments assigned to the second and third angels, the reaping of the harvest and the treading of the wine-press.

 

 


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