The Revelation of St. John the Divine

by A. H. Ames

[¹] Bleek, Lectures on the Apocalypse, p. 285.

The interpretation which has here been put upon the symbols of the two wild beasts—namely, that they represent, the one the spirit of worldliness, the other that autospiritualism or self-centered piety which, for lack of a more comprehensive phrase, may be designated as false prophetism or false asceticism—derives some confirmation from the fact that their resulting effects have been such as the author of the Revelation predicted. Worldliness seems the baser of the two, but its dominion is briefer and less stable. As the mind can never be content with agnosticism, but must by necessity search for some explanation of the mystery of being until satisfaction is gained, so the heart can never fully rest in hopes and themes and joys which are only earthly. The religious instincts inherent in and inalienable from our nature will assert themselves and cry for God. On the other hand, asceticism, while it seems to present a loftier ideal and holds men thereby with a more permanent grasp, is all the more baleful by reason of its deceptiveness. It veils pride, ambition, malice, selfishness, under the guise of superior sanctity, which, while imposing on others by its well-masked duplicity, lulls its victims into almost hopeless slumber by its hypocrisy. Those whom it allures by its professions of superior piety it mocks with disappointing dreams. It is the dark shadow that always waits on holiness and liberty; it is the special temptation that besets souls seeking after purity and knowledge; while worldliness is that to which those are most prone who mingle much with the world and deal with earthly realities. If, on the one hand, it is easy for men to fall into the danger of using their heaven-given faculties for the ignoble purpose of gratifying their lower desires or of turning stones to bread simply that they may live, it is equally easy, on the other, to wander into the opposite error of presuming rashly upon God’s providence and mercy, although humility has degenerated into boasting and love has been perverted to censoriousness. From neither tendency can the regeneration of the world come; both are alike enemies of God and of man.

4. Anticipations of Victory.—It is one of the characteristic peculiarities of St. John’s literary style to introduce a subject which for the moment he merely suggests to our notice, returning to it subsequently in order that he may amplify and complete it. He goes over his work again and again, each time adding some new touch, with the purpose of bringing out in greater prominence some detail of his subject. While each section, therefore, contains in measure an epitome of the whole, in each one some single point is more specifically and elaborately discussed. There is, it is true, advance of thought; but the eagle of the apostolic band moves in circles, bringing into notice of his keen eye every part of the field over which he soars, while each swoop of his wing carries him a little beyond his former orbit, so that his progress is in spirals. The principle which controlled him seems to have been that of presenting to us in sharp and striking antithesis the contrasts between conflicting ideas, while he holds them under our observation.

It is also characteristic of a disposition like St. John’s, and of a life so contemplative and secluded as his was, to view things in the light of their essential principles; not as they become, modified by contact and in relation with each other, but as they radically and germinally are. By consequence such minds, instead of being occupied with the intermediate changes, pass at once to ultimate results and see the end in the beginning.

An instance of this appears in the fourteenth chapter, which is really but an epilogue to the preceding chapters. In the twelfth and thirteenth chapters we have had presented to our vision the formidable enemies with which the Christian believer must struggle. They have been described most graphically and with a fullness of detail not subsequently exceeded. The dramatis personæ are all put upon the stage, and no new actors in the tragedy of existence need be expected. But these enemies are sufficiently numerous and terrible to excite apprehension and awaken earnest inquiries as to our means of resistance and possibilities of success. The seer, therefore, pauses for a moment to review the resources put within our reach and to assure us of their adequacy. “Greater is he that is in you,” he says, “than he that is in the world.” And he fully indorses the emphatic declaration of Paul, “The weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty through God to the pulling down of strongholds.”

In prophesying victory over the dragon and the beasts to the saints of Christ, John separates them into two classes, as he had done in chapter vii. This is not in any spirit of Jewish narrowness or exclusiveness. He had long gotten beyond that and learned to call no man common whom God had cleansed. Even Paul, the apostle of the uncircumcision, recognized a distinction between the Jew, who was first, and the Gentile; so there can be alleged against John no bigotry in recognizing the distinction, inasmuch as he foreshadows equal victory to both classes. There can hardly be a question that by the “hundred forty and four thousand” John meant Israelites after the flesh; for they “stood on the mount Sion;” they sang a song which none others but themselves could learn, namely, the song of Moses and of the Lamb (xv, 3); they were “the first fruits unto God and to the Lamb” (xiv, 4); they were without “guile,” with reference no doubt to John i, 47. They were “virgins,” having the true asceticism—freedom from ungodliness and worldly lusts. There was reason for rejoicing to a Jew like John in the fact that, in spite of the opposition of the rulers and Herods among the chosen people to whom had been committed the oracles of God, and on the very spots of the crucifixion and resurrection, so many of his former co-religionists had become disciples of Christ and followed the Lamb whithersoever he led them.

But the word of God is not bound, nor is it the exclusive property of any race; and the seer immediately adds the vision of the multitudes of “every nation, and kindred, and tongue, and people,” to whom “the everlasting Gospel” was preached and among whom it found adherents. The fullness of the times had come, and Gentiles might “fear God, and give glory to him,” the one Creator of “heaven, and earth, and the sea, and the fountains of waters.”

One new feature is now introduced. Babylon, which occupies so much of the subsequent part of the Apocalypse, is here for the first time mentioned. Babylon, it will be attempted to show, is not another adversary, but an apostate Church which has succumbed to adversaries and thereby become a counterfeit and rival to Christianity. It is here brought upon the stage by anticipation, and its doom foretold, to give completer assurance of the coming victory over all forms and results of sin and evil.

The age in which John lived was an age of martyrdom. How severely this fact tried “the patience” and faith of the early Christians we know from hints in other apostolical writings. Paul found it necessary to show to his brethren in Rome that if they suffered with Christ it was that they might be also glorified together with him. Peter, too, comforts those whose faith was being so sorely tried with the assurance that the trial of their faith was “more precious than of gold that perisheth,” and would be “found unto praise and honor and glory at the appearing of Jesus Christ.” And so John gives to the Church of his day the glad tidings that, although God buries his workmen, he carries on his work; that they, if they died “in the Lord,” should “rest from their labors;” and that “their works” should survive and go on winning victories after their departure.

If it should be asked how or with what weapons they were to overcome, John gives the answer which is found so often in the Book of Revelation that it is one of the keys to unlock its mysteries—they overcome “by the blood of the Lamb, and by the word of their testimony” (Revelation xii, 11); by which latter expression is meant, doubtless, the Scriptures, as explained in the chapter upon the two witnesses. That the two visions which now follow, the harvest of the world and the vintage scene, refer to these two weapons of success furnishes an explanation of them so simple and easy that it is strange they should have occasioned so much difficulty to commentators.