Page images
PDF
EPUB

tyranny over the minds as well as over the bodies of

men.

SECTION V.

The history of the true Church during the period of the great Apostacy-The harvest and vintage of God's

wrath.

its

After this account of the persecution of the witnesses, the war of the dragon, and the rise and tyranny of the two beasts, St. John proceeds to describe the state of the true Church during the same period of 1260 years; great contest with the mystic Babylon at the time of the Reformation; and the judgments of God upon his enemies during the two grand periods comprised under the seventh trumpet, namely the harvest and the vintage of God's wrath.

"And I looked, and lo, a Lamb stood on the mount Zion, and with him an hundred forty and four thousand, having his Father's name written in their foreheads. And I heard a voice from heaven, as the voice of many waters, and as the voice of a great thunder: and I heard the voice of harpers harping with their harps. And they sung as it were a new song before the throne and before the four beasts, and the elders; and no man could learn that song, but the hundred and forty and four thousand, which were redeemed from the earth. These are they, which were not defiled with women, for they are virgins: these are they, which follow the Lamb whithersoever he goeth: these were redeemed from among men, being the

[ocr errors]

Mr. Galloway singularly fancies, that the great whore means the confederacy of the Beast, the false prophet, and the kings of the earth. This opinion of his runs directly counter both to symbolical propriety, and to the plain declaration of St. John, A whore is the symbol of a degenerate and corrupt church, and is never used to typify a conspiracy: the seven-beaded and ten-horned beast, upon which she is sitting, is manifestly the great Roman beast, which had already been described in the 13th chapter of the Revelation and the Apostle explicitly tells us, that the whore is "that great city which reigneth over the kings of the earth." Hence it is manifest, that she must be the Roman empire either pagan or papal. Consequently she cannot be a confederacy, as Mr. Galloway supposes, of Papists, Mohammedans, and Infidels. What is scarcely fair in a professed discussion of a prophecy, Mr. Galloway omits all that part of it which makes against his system. He quotes the 17th chapter of the Revelation, which fully describes the whors and her beast, only as far as the 6th Verse. See Comment. p. 276.

[blocks in formation]

first fruits unto God, and to the Lamb. And in their mouth was found no guile : for they are without fault before the throne of God."

Hitherto we have beheld only the gloomy side of the affairs of the Church, the troubles and persecutions which she experienced from the dragon and the two beasts; we are now invited to contemplate that paradox, which real Christianity can alone explain. The 144,000, here mentioned, are the spiritual descendants of the twelve Apostles, apostolically multiplied. They are the immediate successors of the 144,000 sealed servants of God, who bore their testimony to the truths of the Gospel in the days of Paganism; and who "came out of great tribulation," to enjoy a short respite from their troubles in the tranquil age of Constantine. They are the same in short as the two witnesses, or the line of faithful believers, whom God supported by the invisible though powerful agency of his Spirit through the whole term of the reign of the beasts. In the particular history of the Apostacy itself, they are described as oppressed and prophesying in sackcloth: here they are represented in a state of exultation and triumph, as rejoicing in that " joy which no man taketh from them." The two accounts therefore, when put together, exhibit them to us, like the primitive Christians, as "sorrowful yet always rejoicing," as "rejoicing in tribulation," and as even "exceeding joyful in tribulation." That this exultation is purely of a spiritual nature, and that it subsists along with great temporal adversity, is evident both from the preceding external history of the witnesses, and from the intimations which are given even in the present chapter itself that the Church is still in a suffering state notwithstanding her triumphant spiritual joy in the Lamb.‡

The 144,000 appeared to the Apostle as standing on the mount Zion, or in the true Church, because they constituted the persecuted Church in the wilderness:§ and, as the followers of the beast have the mark and name of

"They are said to have been sealed in the age of Constantine, to separate them, as I have already observed, from the many that then began to "cleave to them with flatteries." Dan. xi. 34.

+ Rev. vii.

See Rev. xiv. 12, 13.

Rev. xii. 6, 14.

[ocr errors]

the beast; so have these the seal of God impressed,* and the name of God written, on their foreheads. They alone are able to learn the new song of the heavenly harpers, because they alone are the worshippers of the one true God through the one true mediator Jesus Christ; the adherents of the Apostacy offering up their devotions to other objects, and through other mediators. They are virgins, undefiled with women, inasmuch as they are free from the pollutions of idolatry; which is spiritual whoredom, and adultery. They follow the Lamb whithersoever he goeth, resolutely adhering to the religion of Christ in troublesome times as well as in prosperous ones, and fleeing into sequestered vallies and wild deserts rather than relinquish their profession of the Gospel. They are redeemed from among men, being rescued by the almighty power of divine grace from the corruptions and abominations of Babylon; and they are consecrated as the first fruits of Christianity unto God and the Lamb, an earnest and assurance of a more plentiful harvest first at the era of the Reformation and afterwards at the yet more glorious era of the Millennium. In their mouth was found no guile: inasmuch as they handle not the word of God deceitfully, like Popish venders of indulgences, and preachers of purgatory, human merit, and idolatry; but faithfully, and simply, declare the way of everlasting life. And they are without fault before the throne of God, having washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb; God not imputing their trespasses unto them, but accounting them as if they had never sinned, through the imputed righteousness of Christ, who was made sin for them, in order that they might be made the righteousness of God in him.

By these 144,000, I understand peculiarly the depressed Church in the wilderness previous to the time of the Reformation: for history sufficiently demonstrates, that there have been in every age some faithful worshippers, who consented not to the general Apostacy, but who prophesied, although in sackcloth, against its abominations. These however went on their way in comparative obscurity, rejoicing that they were accounted wor

* Rev. vii. 3.

thy to suffer for the name of the Lord Jesus. They make no very prominent figure in history, nor were they able to shake the deep-rooted authority of the man of sin. Hence they are represented only as prophesying in sackcloth, and as patiently exulting in their sufferings on mount Zion in the presence of the Lamb. We must next turn our eyes to those more efficacious and decisive measures, which forced the papal tyrant to tremble upon his usurped throne for his now disputed authority.*

"And I saw another angel fly in the midst of heaven, having the everlasting Gospel to preach unto them that dwell on the earth, and to every nation, and kindred, and tongue, and people. Saying with a loud voice, Fear God, and give glory to him, for the hour of his judgment is come and worship him that made heaven and earth, and the sea, and the fountains of waters."

The appearance of the angel, or Christian minister,† here mentioned, is sudden and unexpected. While the 144,000 are humbly singing the song of the Lamb in despised obscurity, this servant of God boldly shews himself in the very midst of the symbolical heaven, a conspicuous object to the whole world, armed only with the everlasting Gospel; which he openly preaches, to them that dwell on the earth, or the Roman empire, loudly calling unto all nations to fear God and worship him only.

This striking and peculiar type will be found precisely to answer in every particular to the dawn of the Refor mation. When the 144,000 had long rejoiced in their sufferings, and had long separated themselves from the communion of the man of sin in order that they might "follow the Lamb whithersoever he goeth;" when a , reformation of the glaring corruptions of Popery was little likely to originate in the symbolical heaven either ecclesiastical or secular: then it was that Luther first stepped forward. "While the Roman pontiff," says the historian Mosheim, "slumbered in security at the head of the Church, and saw nothing throughout the vast ex

See Bp. Newton's Dissert. on Rev. xiv. In the exposition of the first part of this chapter, I have followed his Lordship; in that of the succeeding verses I am obliged to dissent from him.

† See Rev. i, 20.

tent of his dominion but tranquillity and submission; and while the worthy and pious professors of genuine Christianity almost despaired of seeing that Reformation, on which their most ardent desires and expectations were bent an obscure and inconsiderable person arose on a sudden, in the year 1517, and laid the foundation of the long expected change, by opposing with undaunted resolution his single force to the torrent of papal ambition and despotism."*

The angel is represented as bearing the everlasting Gospel-Accordingly the Gospel was the only instrument which his antitype Luther used in opposing the fury and machinations of his enemies, and in spreading the light of the Reformation. After the appearance of a special edict of Leo the tenth, in which he commanded his spiritual subjects to acknowledge his power of delivering from all the punishments due to sin and transgressions of every kind, and when the iniquitous traffic of indulgences was at its height; then did Luther raise his warning voice, and call upon the whole earth to turn away from those vanities unto one God and one mediator between God and man, to worship him only who made heaven and earth. Not content however with barely maintaining this evangelical tenet, he speedily turned the powerful two-edged sword of the Gospel against his antagonists, by publishing a German translation of the Bible; "the different parts of which," says Mosheim, "being successively and gradually spread among the people, produced a sudden and almost incredible effect, and extirpated, root and branch, the erroneous principles and superstitious doctrines of the Church of Rome from the minds of a prodigious number of persons." Thus accurately did the type of an angel bearing the Gospel answer to the proceedings of the great reformer Luther: and it is worthy of notice, that the Reformation itself, which he was one main cause of introducing, and which was in reality a republication of the long-concealed Gospel, has been actually so termed in a history of its progress quoted by Mosheim.† The

Eccles. Hist. Cent. 16. Sect. 1. Chap. 2.

+ Historia Evangelii renovati.

« PreviousContinue »