These visions introduce what transcends the

time-limits of

(chap. xix, 11-xxi, 8) covers the entire field of biblical eschatology. The whole is rapidly sketched, for details would have transcended the purpose of "the prophecy of this book " (xxii, 10), which was to make known things which were shortly to come to pass (chap. i, 1-3). But like the last the book. section of our Lord's discourse (Matt. xxv, 31-46), which introduces things running far beyond the time-limits of that prophecy, but which were to commence "when the Son of man should come in his glory;" so this sevenfold vision begins with the parousia (chap. xix, 11), and sketches in brief outline the mighty triumphs and eternal issues of the Messiah's reign.'

The Millennium

dispensation.

We understand that the millennium of Rev. xx, 1-6, is now in progress. It dates from the consummation of the Jewish age. It is a round definite number used symboli- is the Gospel cally for an indefinite æon. It is the period of the Messianic reign, and the kingdom of the heavens, like the mustard seed and the leaven (Matt. xiii, 31-33), is passing through its gradual development. It may require a million years. The impatient Chiliast will not be satisfied with this slow Messianic order, and refuses to see that the powers of darkness have been repressed, and the progress of human civilization has been more marked since the end of that age than ever before. But others see and know that since the dawn of Christianity, idolatry has been well nigh abolished, and every element of righteousness and truth has been gaining prominence and control in the laws of nations." It is not in accord

Lange suggestively but somewhat fancifully observes: "The entire æon is to be conceived of as an æon of separations and eliminations in an ethical and a cosmical sense, separations and eliminations such as are necessary to make manifest and to complete the ideal regulations of life. Of judgments of damnation between the judgment upon Antichrist and the judgment upon Satan there can be no question; the reference can be only to a critical government and management preparatory to the final consummation. The whole æon is a crisis which occasions the visible appearance of the heaven on earth. The whole æon is the great last day. We may even conceive of the mutiny which finally breaks out as a result of these preparations, for a sort of protest on the part of the wicked was hinted at by Christ in his eschatological discourse (Matt. xxv, 44), and the most essential element in the curse of hell is the continuance of revolt, the gnashing of teeth."-Commentary on the Revelation of John, p. 350. American edition. New York, 1874.

2 Pope represents the Catholic faith and interpretation as "content to understand figuratively the glowing representations of the ancient prophecies as applying to the present Christian Church. It takes the Apocalypse as a book of symbols, which does not give consecutive history, but continually reverts to the beginning, and exhibits in varying visions the same one great final truth. Satan was bound or cast out when our Saviour ascended; he has never since been the god and seducer of the nations as he was before, and as he will for a season be permitted to be again. The saints,

The vision of

salem.

with either history or prophecy to believe that the Gospel of the kingdom of Christ will have for its historical period an æon shorter than that required for its preparation in the typical dispensations which preceded it. It is not probable that God would take four thousand years of type and shadow to prepare the world for two thousand years of light. We should not expect the earlier part of the Messianic millennium to be without any darkness, and there is nothing in the Scriptures to warrant the idea that its entire period is to be one of uniform and unclouded blessedness and glory. There remains for our notice but one more great apocalyptic picture, the vision of the New Jerusalem. As in chap. the New Jeru- xvi, 19, under the seventh and last plague, the fall of the great Babylon (old Jerusalem) was briefly outlined, and then, in chap. xvii-xix, 10, another and more detailed portraiture of that "mother of the harlots and of the abominations of the land" was added, going over many of the same things again, so here, having given under the last series of visions a short but vivid picture of the heavenly Jerusalem (xxi, 1-8), the apocalyptist, following his artistic style and habit of repetition, tells how one of the same seven angels (comp. xvii, 1-4,and xxi, 9-11) took him to a lofty mountain, and gave him a fuller vision of the Bride, the wife of the Lamb. This wife of the Lamb is no other than the woman of chap. xii, 1, but she is here revealed at a later stage of her history, after the dragon has been shut up in the abyss. After the land has been cleared of dragon, beast, and false prophet, the seed of the woman who fled into the wilderness, the seed caught up to the throne of God, are conceived as "coming down out of heaven from God," and all things are made new. The language and symbols used are appropriated mainly from Isaiah lxv, 17-lvi, 24, and the closing chapters of Ezekiel. The great thought is: Babylon, the bloody harlot, has fallen, and New Jerusalem, the glorious Bride, appears.

As the closing chapters of Ezekiel have been variously underMeaning of the stood (see above, pp. 344, 345), so this vision of the New Jerusalem. New Jerusalem, which is evidently modelled after the pattern of that older Apocalypse, has been explained in different martyrs, and others-the martyrs pre-eminentlyy-now rule with Christ: and hath made us a kingdom (Rev. i, 6), they themselves sing; and they reign upon earth (Rev. v, 10). The apostles, and all saints, have part in the first resurrection, and in the present regeneration reign with Jesus, though the future regeneration shall be yet more abundant. The unanimous strain of prophecy concerning the glory of the Messiah's kingdom is to be interpreted as partly fulfilled in the spiritual reign of Christ in this world, which is not yet fully manifested as it will be; and partly as the earthly figure of a heavenly reality hereafter."-Compendium of Christian Theology, vol. iii, pp. 400, 401. N. Y., 1881.

ways. (1) According to one class of interpreters, the future restoration of the Jews to Palestine, and the rebuilding of Jerusalem on a magnificent scale, are here predicted.' (2) According to others, the new heaven, new land, and new Jerusalem are but a symbolic recapitulation of the visions of chap. xx, for the purpose of fuller detail, and are to be understood as synchronizing with the period of the thousand years. (3) But most interpreters regard the prophecy as post-millennial, and descriptive of the final heavenly state of the glorified saints of God. Rejecting the first of the above named views (which represents the sensuous Ebionite conception of the kingdom of heaven, and magnifies the letter to the quenching of the spirit of Scripture), we may blend the two other interpretations. Ezekiel's vision, as we have seen (p. 345), symbolized the New Testament Church and kingdom of God; why should not the same conception enter into this parallel prophecy? But as later revelations are wont to embody fuller and more perfect outlines of the provisions of grace, so John's picture of new heaven, new land, and new city is more luminous and far reaching in its indications of what God has prepared for those who love him and keep his commandments.

The words of Haggai ii, 6, 7, are acknowledged by the best interpreters to be a Messianic prophecy: "Yet once-it is Hag. i, 6, 7, and a little while-and I will shake the heavens, and the Heb. xii, 26–28. land, and the sea, and the desert; and I will shake all the nations, and they shall come to the delight' of all the nations, and I will

1 Here properly belongs that exposition of the "new heaven and new earth," which finds in Isa. li, 16; lxv, 17; lxvi, 22; 2 Pet. iii, 10-13; Rev. xx, 11; xxi, 1, a literal prophecy of the destruction of the world by fire, and the creation of a new world in its place. The only question among these interpreters is whether an absolutely new creation is intended, or only a renovation (wahɩyyɛveoía, regeneration (Matt. xix, 28) of the materials of the old. That these texts may intimate or dimly foreshadow some such ultimate reconstruction of the physical creation, need not be denied, for we know not the possibilities of the future, nor the purposes of God respecting all things which he has created. But the contexts of these several passages do not authorize such a doctrine. Isa. li, 16, refers to the resuscitation of Zion and Jerusalem, and is clearly metaphorical. The same is true of Isa. lxv, 17, and lxvi, 22, for the context in all these places confines the reference to Jerusalem and the people of God, and sets forth the same great prophetic conception of the Messianic future as the closing chapters of Ezekiel. The language of 2 Pet. iii, 10, 12, is taken mainly from Isa. xxx, 4, and is limited to the parousia, like the language of Matt. xxiv, 29. Then the Lord made "not only the land but also the heaven" to tremble (Heb. xii, 26), and removed the things that were shaken in order to establish a kingdom which cannot be moved (Heb. xii, 27, 28).

This most simple construction of the Hebrew has been strangely ignored by a supposed necessity of making, delight, or desire, the subject of the verb 7,

fill this house with glory." This prophecy is quoted and explained, in Heb. xii, 26-28, as the removal of an earth and heaven which shall give place to an "immovable kingdom." Is there any reason for believing this immovable kingdom to be other than that of which the Lord spoke in Matt. xvi, 28: "There are some standing here who shall not taste of death, till they see the Son of man coming in his kingdom"? The greatest "glory of that latter house," of which Haggai (ii, 7, 9) spoke, was attained when the Lord Christ entered and taught within its courts; but the destruction of the second temple, and the shaking of "the heaven and the land" which it represented, prepared the way for the nobler temple of "his body, the fulness of him who fills all things in all" (Eph. i, 23). Of this body Christ is the head, the husband, and Saviour (Eph. v, 23), having loved her and given himself for her, "that he might sanctify her, having purified her by the laver of water in the word, that he himself might present to himself in glorious beauty the Church, not having spot or wrinkle, or any such thing" (Eph. v, 26, 27).' This glorious Church is manifestly the same as the Bride, the wife of the Lamb, the holy city, New Jerusalem. It was necessary that the Old Testament visible Church should be shaken and fall and pass away, for its glory had departed; but in its place comes forth "the whole assembly and church of the firstborn who are enrolled in heaven" (Heb. xii, 23).

If, furthermore, we allow the author of the Epistle to the HeAllusion of brews to guide us to a right understanding of the New Heb. xii, 22, 23. Jerusalem, we will observe that the communion and fellowship of New Testament saints are apprehended as heaven begun on earth. It is altogether probable that this epistle was

בָּאוּ

come. But is plural, and has naturally for its subject the nations (Dția) just mentioned. So in Isa. xxxv, 10, "The ransomed of Jehovah shall return, and come to Zion, with shouting and everlasting joy upon their heads." When we read further, in Isa. lxv, 18, as explanatory of the new heavens and new land (ver. 17), “Behold, I create Jerusalem a rejoicing, and her people a joy," we will find therein the surest explanation of the п, delight, of Hag. ii, 7. The New Jerusalem, the New Testament Church and kingdom of God, is the delight and desire of the nations, which, according to Rev. xxi, 24, walk by the light of it.

"The union of Christ," says Meyer, "with his Church, at the parousia, in order to confer upon it Messianic blessedness, is conceived of by Paul (as also by Christ himself, Matt. xxv, 1; comp. Rev. xix, 7; see also John iii, 29) under the figure of the bringing home of a bride, wherein Christ appears as the bridegroom, and sets forth the bride, i. e., his Church, as a spotless virgin (the bodily purity is a representative of the ethical) before himself, after he has already in this age cleansed it by the bath of baptism, and sanctified it through his word."-Critical Com. on Ephesians, in loco.

written after the Book of Revelation,' and direct allusions to it are apparent in the following passage: "Ye are come (πpoσεληλúvate, ye have already come) unto Mount Zion, and unto the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem." The Christian believer, when his life becomes hidden with Christ in God, has already entered into a communion and fellowship that never ceases. His name is enrolled in heaven. He dwells in God and God in him, and all subsequent glorification in time and in eternity is but a continuous and growing realization of the blessedness of the Church and Kingdom of God.

outline of what

In the vision of the New Jerusalem we have the last New Testament revelation of the spiritual and heavenly blessed- New Jerusalem ness and glory of which the Mosaic tabernacle was a the heavenly material symbol. The "dwelling of the testimony" the tabernacle (л, Exod. xxxviii, 21) and its various vessels symbolized. and services were "copies of the things in the heavens" (Heb. ix, 23), and Christ has entered into the holy places "through the greater and more perfect tabernacle” (Heb. ix, 11), thereby making it possible for all true believers to enter "with boldness into the entrance way of the holies" (Heb. x, 19). This entrance into the holy places and fellowships is realized only as "we draw near with a true heart, in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience, and the body washed with pure water" (Heb. x, 22), and such spiritual access is possible to us now. The Alpha and the Omega, accordingly, says: "Blessed are they who wash their robes, that they may have the authority over the tree of life, and by the gates may enter into the city" (Rev. xxii, 14). This city is represented as a perfect cube in form (Rev. xxi, 16), and may therefore be regarded as the heavenly Holy of Holies, into the entrance way (eloodov) of which we may now approach. All this accords with the voice from the throne, which said: "Behold the tabernacle of God is with men, and he will tabernacle with them, and they shall be his people, and God himself shall be with them" (Rev. xxi, 3). Herein we discern the true antitype of the ancient tabernacle and temple, and hence it is that this holy city

and

1 Comp. the "innumerable company of angels" (Heb. xii, 22) with Rev. v, 11; the "assembly and church enrolled in heaven" with Rev. xiii, 8; xxi, 27; and "spirits of just men made perfect" with Rev. vii, 13-17. References and allusions as direct and explicit as these, made by any of the early Fathers to books of the New Testament, would be regarded by all critics as indisputable evidence of the pre-existence of such books. Comp. Cowles, The Revelation of John, p. 22; Glasgow, The Apocalypse, Translated and Expounded, pp. 29, 30.

2 Comp. Riehm, Messianic Prophecy, pp. 164–166. Edinb., 1876.