all wickedness. Describing the excessive impiety of the Jewish leaders, Josephus remarks: "No age ever bred a generation more fruitful in wickedness than this was from the beginning of the world." "I suppose that had the Romans made any longer delay in coming against these villains the city would either have been swallowed up by the ground opening upon them, or been overwhelmed by water, or else been destroyed by such thunder as the country of Sodom perished by; for it had brought forth a generation of men much more atheistical than were those that suffered such punishments; for by their madness it was that all the people came to be destroyed." Was not some fact like this before the mind of our Lord when he spoke of the unclean spirit that took seven others more wicked than himself, and returned and entered the house from which he had been cast out? "So shall it be," said he, "with this wicked generation" (Matt. xii, 43–45).

Euphrates.

The sixth trumpet is the signal for unloosing the armies restrained The armies of "at the great river Euphrates" (ix, 14). All proper names of this book appear to be symbolical. So we understand Sodom and Egypt (xi, 8), Michael (xii, 7), Zion (xiv, 1), Har-Magedon (xvi, 16), Babylon (xvii, 5), and New Jerusalem (xxi, 2). It would be contrary to all these analogies to understand the name Euphrates (in ix, 14, and xvi, 12) in a literal sense. In chap. xvii, 1 the mystic Babylon is represented as sitting upon many waters, and these waters are explained in verse 15 as symbolizing peoples and multitudes and nations and tongues. What more natural explanation of this symbol, then, than to understand it of the multitudinous armies, which in their appointed time came with their prowess and terror, compassed the Jewish capital about, and pressed the siege with unrelenting fury to the bitter end? The Roman army was composed of soldiers from many nations, and fitly corresponds with the abomination of desolation spoken of in our Lord's discourse (Matt. xxiv, 15). "When ye see Jerusalem compassed with armies, then know that her desolation is at hand" (Luke xxi, 20).

At this momentous point in the revelation, and when we might

'Whiston's Josephus; Wars, book v, chapters x, 5, and xiii, 6.

2 The star fallen from heaven, to whom is given the key of the pit of the abyss, can scarcely denote any other than the Satan whom Jesus saw falling like lightning from heaven (Luke x, 18), and the names Abaddon and Apollyon are but symbolic names of Satan, the prince or chief of the demons. It should be noticed also that in chap. xviii, 2 the fallen Babylon is described as having "become a habitation of demons, and a hold of every unclean spirit, and a hold of every unclean and hateful bird."

That Euphrates is here to be taken as a symbolical name is ably shown by Fair bairn, Prophecy, etc., pp. 410, 411, and Appendix M.

with cloud and

naturally expect the seventh trumpet to sound, there is a pause, and lo," another strong angel, coming down from the heav- The mighty en, arrayed with a cloud, and the rainbow upon his Angel arrayed head, and his face as the sun, and his feet as pillars of rainbow. fire" (x, 1). The attributes of this angel, and their correspondence with the sublime description of the Son of man in chap. i, 13-16, point him out as no other than the Lord himself,' and his lion-like cry, and the accompanying voices of the seven thunders, remind us of Paul's prophecy that "the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with voice of archangel, and with trump of God" (1 Thess. iv, 16). This is no other than "the Son of man coming in the clouds of heaven with power and great glory," which Jesus himself foretold as destined to come to pass in that generation (Matt. xxiv, 30-34). His glorious appearance seems like a prelude to the sound of the last trumpet, but the delay is not to defer the catastrophe, but to furnish an opportunity to say that with the voice of the seventh angel the mystery of God is to be finished (verses 6 and 7). The prophet also takes a book from the angel's hand and eats it (8-11) after the manner of Ezekiel (ii, 9-iii, 3), and is told that he shall "prophesy again over many peoples and nations and tongues and kings." For John survived that terrible catastrophe, and lived long after to make known the testimony of God. It was more than a suggestion that that disciple should tarry till the coming of the Lord (comp. John xxi, 21-24). The measurement of the temple, altar, and worshippers (xi, 1), and the treading under foot of the holy city forty-two months (three years and a half=a time, times, and a half a time), signify that the whole will be given over to desolation. This, again, corresponds with our Lord's words (Luke xxi, 24): “Jerusalem shall be trodden down of the Gentiles until the times of the Gentiles be fulfilled." Judging from the analogy of the language of Daniel, the "times of the

1 It is in accord with the habit of repetition common to apocalyptic prophecies that the Son of man should appear in this book under various forms. First the glorious Christophany of chap. i, then as the Lamb with seven horns and seven eyes (v, 6), then as the mighty, rainbow-encircled Angel of this passage (x, 1), then as Michael (xii, 7), and again as a Lamb (xiv, 1), and as the Son of man on a cloud (xiv, 14), then as the rider on the white horse (xix, 11), and finally as the Judge sitting on a great white throne (xx, 11). Thus the Apocalypse of Jesus Christ fittingly reveals him in manifold aspects of his character and glory. So, also, on the other hand, the arch-enemy, or antichrist, appears under various forms of manifestation, as Abaddon, or Apollyon, the angel of the abyss (ix, 11), the great red dragon (xii, 3), the beast out of the sea and out of the land (xiii, 1, 11), the scarlet-coloured beast on which the harlot is sitting (xvii, 3), the beast out of the abyss (xvii, 8; comp. xi, 7), and even the mystic Babylon considered as a habitation of devils (xviii, 2).

Gentiles" (kaupoi; comp. Luke xxi, 24, with the Septuagint and Theodotion of Dan. vii, 25; xii, 7) are the "time, times, and half a time" during which the destructive siege was to continue, and the city be trodden without and within. During a corresponding period the two witnesses prophecy. These are, perhaps, best understood as a symbolic portraiture of the martyrs who perished by Jewish persecution, here conceived as two witnesses (comp. Deut. xvii, 6; xix, 15; Matt. xviii, 16; 2 Cor. xiii, 1) attested by such signs as proved Moses and Elijah to be true prophets, but perishing in the city where also their Lord was crucified after he had performed miracles "to-day and to-morrow and the third," and declared that it was "not allowable for a prophet to perish out of Jerusalem" (Luke xiii, 33).

pet.

With this revelation, which stands as an episode between the sixth and seventh trumpets, we are the more fully prepared to feel The last trum- the tremendous significance of the last trumpet. In that lingering hour of the sixth trumpet-an awful pause before the final blast-"There was a great earthquake, and the tenth part of the city fell." It would not be difficult to cite from the pages of Josephus an almost literal fulfilment of these words.1 The imagery has allusion to the trumpet signaled fall of Jericho.

1 See Josephus, Wars, book iv, chap. iv, 5, and chap. v. 1. If any one would see the fanciful and arbitrary hermeneutical methods into which some of the continuoushistorical interpreters of the Revelation unconsciously involve themselves, let him note the following from Faber: "The great city (mystic Babylon) is said to comprehend ten different parts, or streets, which answer to the ten horns of the first apocalyptic wild beast, and which denote the ten kingdoms of the divided Roman Empire; for, since one tenth part of the great city is thrown down by an earthquake at the close of the second woe, such language necessarily implies a division into ten parts. The same great city is viewed also under two different aspects, according to its wider and its narrower extent. As a literal city may, at one time, comprehend within its walls a much larger tract of land than it does at another time, whence a district which was formerly within it may be subsequently without it; so the allegorical great city is variously spoken of, according as in point of geography it is variously contemplated. On this principle the platform of the ten streets, though it constituted the whole city when viewed in reference to the ecclesiastical authority exercised from its palace or centre, constituted but a part of it when viewed in reference to the wide dominions of the Roman Cæsars; and on the same principle, any province which lies beyond the geographical limits of the ten streets may be truly described as being either within or without the city. In this same manner, accordingly, we find the province of Judea spoken of. Our Lord is said to have been crucified within the great city, because he was crucified in the province of Judea, at that time within the limits of the Roman Empire [so was Britain! Surely a remarkable way of telling where the Lord was crucified]; yet is that identical province described as being without the great city (Rev. xi, 8; xiv, 20), because it lies without the platform of the ten streets which constitute the proper Western Empire, or Latin Patriarchate."— The Sacred Calendar of Prophecy (3 vols., Lond., 1828), vol. i, pp. 31, 32. Comp. other specimens in Farrar, The Early Days of Christianity, pp. 434, 435.

The second part

Next and "quickly" (xi, 14) the last trumpet sounds, and great voices in the heaven say "The kingdom of the world is become our Lord's and his Christ's, and he shall reign unto the ages of the ages" (ver. 15). The old æon has passed, the new one has begun, and the heavenly host shout a pæan of triumph. The blood of the souls that cried from under the altar (vi, 10) is now avenged, and those prophets and saints receive their reward (xi, 18). The old temple disappears, and the temple of God which is in heaven opens, and reveals the long-lost ark of the covenant (ver. 19), henceforth accessible to all who are washed in the blood of the Lamb. The second part of the Apocalypse (chaps. xii-xxii) is not a chronological sequel to the first, but travels over the same ground again. The two parts have a relation to each other somewhat like the dream of the great image and the vision of the four beasts in the Book of Daniel. They cover the same field of vision, but view things under different aspects. The first part exhibits the terrible vengeance of the Lamb upon his enemies, as if contemplating everything from the idea of the king "who sent forth his armies and destroyed those murderers, and burned their city" (Matt. xxii, 7). The second part presents a vivid outline of the struggling Church passing her first crisis, and rising through persecution and danger to triumph and glory. The same great struggles and the same fearful catastrophe appear in each part, though under different symbols.

of the Apoca

tion of the first under other

lypse a repeti

symbols.

By the woman, in chap. xii, 1, we understand the apostolic Church; the man-child (ver. 5) represents her children, the ad- The Woman herents and faithful devotees of the Gospel. The im- and the Dragon. agery is taken from Isa. lxvi, 7, 8. These are the children of "the Jerusalem which is above," and which Paul calls " our mother" (Gal. iv, 26). The statement that this child was to rule all nations with a rod of iron, and be caught up to the throne of God, has led many to suppose that Christ is designated. But the language of the promise to the church of Thyatira (chap. ii, 26, 27), and the vision of the martyrs who live and reign with Christ a thousand years (chap. xx, 4-6), show that Christ's faithful martyrs, whose blood was the seed of the Church, are associated with him in the authority and administration of his Messianic rule. The dragon is the old serpent, the devil, and his standing ready to devour the child as soon as born is an image appropriated from Pharaoh's attitude toward the infant Israelites (Exod. i, 16). Michael and his angels are but symbolic names of Christ and his apostles. The war in heaven was fought in the same element where the woman appeared, and the casting out of demons by Christ and his apostles

was the reality to which these symbols point (comp. Luke x, 18; John xii, 31). The soul-conflicts of the Christian are of like character.1 The flight of the woman into the wilderness was the scattering of the Church by reason of bitter persecutions (comp. Acts viii, 1), but especially that flight of the church in Judea which Jesus authorized when his disciples should see the signs of the end (Matt. xxiv, 16; Luke xxi, 21).

The Beasts from

the land.

Being cast down from the heavenly places, the dragon stood upon the sand of the sea, and next revealed himself in a wild the sea and from beast, which is seen coming up out of the sea (xiii, 1). He combines various features of a leopard, a bear, and a lion, the first three beasts of Daniel's vision (Dan. vii, 4, 6), and the power which the dragon gives him imparts to him all the malignity, blasphemy, and persecuting violence which characterized Daniel's fourth beast at the appearance of the little horn. This beast we understand to be the Roman Empire, especially as represented in Nero, under whom the Jewish war began, and by whom the woman's seed, the saints (comp. xii, 17, and xiii, 7), were most bitterly persecuted. He was the veriest incarnation of wickedness, a signal revelation of antichrist, and corresponds in every essential feature with the man of sin, the son of perdition, of whom Paul wrote to the Thessalonians (2 Thess. ii, 3–10). At the same time another beast is seen coming up out of the land (xiii, 11), having two horns like a lamb. But he is only the satellite, the alter ego and representative of the first beast, and exercises his authority. This second beast is a proper symbol of the Roman government of Judea by procurators, and if we seek for the meaning of the two horns, we may find it in the two procurators specially noted for their tyranny and oppression, Albinus and Gessius Florus. It is a wellknown fact that the Christians of this period were required to worship the image of the emperor or die, and the procurators were the emperor's agents to enforce this measure." Thus the second beast

1 Paul fully recognized the spiritual and demoniacal character of the Christian's struggle when he wrote: "Our wrestling is not against blood and flesh, but against the principalities, against the powers, against the world-rulers of this darkness, against the spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places" (Eph. vi, 12). Such conflict was a war in heaven.

2 Comp. Farrar, Early Days of Christianity, chap. xxviii, section v.

*See Josephus, Ant., book xx, chap. ix, 1, and chap. xi, 1. Wars, book ii, chaps. xiv. and xv.

'Alford, after quoting in evidence from Pliny's letter to Trajan, observes: "If it be said, as an objection to this, that it is not an image of the emperor, but of the beast itself, which is spoken of, the answer is very simple, that as the seer himself in chap. xvii, 11 does not hesitate to identify one of the seven kings with the beast itself, so