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this great revelation of the coming future? be simply, as in the case of some other revelations from God, by the reading out what was written in the Book? Not so. The subject-matter therein contained was, in a manner far more interesting, to be visibly enacted, even as in a living drama; and for the requisite scenery and agency alike heaven and earth put in requisition. Nor, again, was the beauty of dramatic plan and order to be wanting; indeed of plan and order the most perfect. Before entering on the prefigurative visions themselves, it will be of important advantage to us to consider these two points preparatorily: I mean first, the scenic imagery made use of in the development of the prophecy ; secondly, its plan, order, and chief divisions, as marked in the seven-sealed book containing it.-And,

I. THE APOCALYPTIC SCENERY.

Now of the apocalyptic scenery, as the reader will be aware, no detailed or connected account is given us. We have only incidental notices of it. These, however, occur perpetually; and, if carefully gathered up and compared together, will be found wonderfully to harmonize, so as indeed to indicate a scenery designedly provided for the occasion, consistent and complete. And the importance of an early and familiar acquaintance with it will hence sufficiently appear, in that it is that from which the character and meaning of many important points in the apocalyptic prefigurations is alone to be deduced; and that too which connects and gives unity to them as a whole.

The scene then first visible, and which remained stationary throughout the visions in the foreground, was as of the interior of a temple; including in its secret and inmost sanctuary the throne of Jehovah already spoken of, and the blessed company attendant round it. For

death of the cross. Wherefore God also hath highly exalted him that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow; of things in heaven, and things on earth, and things under the earth, &c."

As in that communicated through Jeremiah, Jer. xxxvi. 2, 6, 32.

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this did not appear in open space or public: but, as seems manifest in the progress of the prophetic drama, and is indeed in one place directly intimated, within the inclosure of a temple sanctuary.'-It was a temple resembling Solomon's, or, yet more, the tabernacle framed earlier by Moses in the wilderness; although on a grander scale, at least as regards the inner sanctuary,2 and with other marked peculiarities. The which resemblance is also expressly intimated to us. For it was called upon one occasion "the temple of God; on another, in words only referable to the Jewish temple or tabernacle, " "the temple of the tabernacle of witness, in heaven."3-Moreover in its parts and divisions it well corresponded with that of Israel. The temple proper, or sanctuary, was similarly constituted of the holy place and that most holy; save that there was no vail, as of old, to separate them: the one being characterized by the golden altar of incense, and, as I think also, by the seven burning lamps; the other by the divine glory, and the ark of the covenant. A court too appeared attached to this sanctuary, just as to the Jewish, and one similarly marked by an altar of sacrifice standing in it besides that there was the similar appendage of an outer court also, as if of the Gentiles.5

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1 xvi. 17; "There came a great voice out of the temple of heaven, from the throne." Thus the position of the Apocalyptic throne, as of that seen by Isaiah, (Is. vi. 1,) is fixed within the temple: the public opening of which is noticed as a new thing, Apoc. xi. 19. 2 Compare Heb. ix. 11.

3 xi. 19; xv. 5. Compare Acts vii. 44; "Our fathers had the tabernacle of witness in the wilderness;" also Num. xviii. 2, &c.

iv. 5, viii. 3, ix. 13, xi. 19. The absence of a vail between the holy place and that most holy appears from this, that what passed in the one, as well as the other, was alike visible to St. John: whose station, from its commanding the view both without the sanctuary and within it, we may not improbably suppose to have been near its entrance door. This difference might perhaps have been expected in a temple symbolic of the christian church; the vail having been rent at Christ's death, and the way made open into the holiest. Compare Matt. xxvii. 51, with the apostle's exposition, Heb. ix. 8, x. 19, 20. See also Bishop Lowth's remarks on Isaiah's vision of Jehovah enthroned in the temple. Isaiah vi.

5 The first notice of the altar is under the fifth seal, vi. 9: "I saw the souls under the altar," &c.-It is to be observed that wherever in the New Testament the word altar (Ovσiasnpiov) occurs alone, the brazen altar of sacrifice seems intended by it. So Matt. xxiii, 19, 35; Luke xi. 51; 1 Cor. ix. 13; Heb. xiii. 10; Apoc. vi. 9, viii. 3, 5, xvi. 7. I might add Apoc. xi. 1, xiv. 18; only that here the altar-court, as well as altar, seems intended.-Where the altar of incense is

2

As the visions proceeded, other objects appeared in connected landscape, around and beneath the temple. Nearest was the Mount Zion and its holy city:' not the literal Jerusalem, which had been levelled to the ground, and was now literally in bondage with her children; but that which, though in some things different, sufficiently resembled it to have the likeness at once recognised, and to receive the appellation :—then, beneath and beyond, far stretching, (even as it might have appeared from that high mountain whence were seen in a moment of time the kingdoms of the world and the glory of them,3) the miniature but living landscape of the Roman Empire.-Both the Mount Zion and the temple seem to have appeared high raised above the earth, although not altogether detached from it; and the former, as well as latter, in near proximity to the heavenly glory within the sanctuary. So that while, on the one hand, the temple might be called "the temple of the tabernacle of witness in heaven," and they that were true worshippers and citizens in the temple and Mount Zion," the tabernaclers in heaven,"—yet, on the other, the outer court of the temple appeared accessible to the inhabitants of the earth below, and the holy city susceptible of invasion from them.*

Such was the standing scenery throughout the Apocalyptic visions. Nor was it depicted before St. John as a mere ornamental appendage; but was to be made use of, as I have already intimated, both emblematically and chorographically,-to furnish figures and to designate localities, just as the scenery of countries elsewhere prophesied of, with a view to the elucidation of the prophecy.

It is to be remembered that the subject of the pro

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meant, it is expressly so designated. So Luke i. 11; "The angel of the Lord appeared unto Zacharias standing on the right of the altar of incense; and Apoc. viii. 3, ix. 13; "the golden altar before the throne." The outer court is noticed, xi. 1. 1 Apoc. xiv. 1, xi. 2. 3 Matt. iv. 8. 4 Apoc. xii. 12, xv. 5, xiv. 1, 2; and xi. 1, 2.

2 Gal. iv. 25.

mised revelation was large and complex," the things which should happen thereafter." It was to be the same, in effect, as that which in its retrospective delineation constitutes the combined secular and ecclesiastical history of Christendom :-the former, or secular, comprehending the grand political changes and revolutions of the Roman world, with the agencies instrumental in causing them, whether from without or from within: the latter, or ecclesiastical, the outward fortunes, adverse or prosperous, of the church; its purity or corruptions of doctrine and worship, its general apostacy in the course of time, the coalescing of the apostatizing church with the world, and the separation, sufferings, faith, protection, and ultimate triumph of the saints, that is, of the true people, the spiritual church of God.

Such being the subject, so large, various, and complex, and the more complex from the events of its two great divisions, the secular and the ecclesiastical, often intermingling, the difficulty must be obvious of fitly exhibiting it; especially in respect of marking the due connexion of events, and with the proper unity of effect. The difficulty has been frequently felt and noticed by those who have delineated it in history; and must apply of course in full measure to its foreshowing in prophecy. Which being the case, it is really interesting to consider how suited the provision of the apocalyptic scenery was to lessen, if not to overcome it.

In the first place, to represent CHRIST'S CHURCH in respect of its worshipping, (that Church which is "the house of the living God,") there was the hieroglyphic temple:-its inmost or most holy place including, as the fit locality, that part of the church constituency, the spirits of the just, which was then with Christ in heaven, and of which I have, in the preceding chapter, already spoken its outer sanctuary, or holy place, (the vestibule and passage to the former,2) figuring, by what might be

1 1 Tim. iii. 15. Compare Eph. ii. 21.

2 Compare Heb. ix. 1; "The first covenant had άylov koσμkov, a worldly Holy Place; or (as appears from verses 23, 24, where the Holy of Holies is

noticeable within it, the secret spirituality of the worship as seen and accepted by Christ, of his saints on earth'; and the temple-court, and what past therein, what was publicly observable in their public and corporate worship. -Further, to symbolize their peculiar polity and citizenship, there appeared the holy city and Mount Zion; the visible picturing of St. Paul's ideal metropolitan city of the Christian body,' with its base on earth, its mountainhead towards heaven :- a symbol of the saints, in truth, as significant as it was beautiful: forasmuch as they are members of a city and kingdom different from those of this world; 2 while in the world being not of the world, but having their citizenship, their Tea, in heaven.3. Besides all which, in order the better to signify events, views, or changes of importance affecting or charac

explained as the symbol of heaven) a Holy Place symbolizing the Church in this world. So Bishop Hall in his Contemplation on Zachary in Luke i, "The outer Temple was the figure of the whole Church on earth; like as the Holy of Holies represented heaven." An idea adopted and applied in one of our well-known hymns; "The holy to the holiest leads."-Josephus (Antiquities, iii. 11) explains the symbol nearly in the same manner; and Clemens Alexandrinus also, calling it κόσμο το αισθητου συμβολον. Others too of the Fathers might be quoted in illustration.-Bishop Middleton's explanation, in case that we feel obliged to take кoσμikov as an adjective, is to much the same effect.

1 Heb. xii. 22.

2 It should be remembered that heavenly is a word often used of things on earth which have a heavenly origin, association, or ending. So, Heb. viii. 5, St. Paul speaks of the things in the Jewish temple as a "shadow of heavenly things;" meaning, of things spiritual in the christian church. And so too Christ's kingdom of heaven, spoken of in the gospels, embraces the saints on earth. Similarly what is called "the heavenly Jerusalem," or, "the Jerusalem above," (Heb. xii. 22, Gal. iv. 26,) in either case an ideal city, embraces them also. Thus it was used by St. Paul as a type of the whole christian church,-militant as well as triumphant; and seems in that sense to have been visibly represented to St. John. In Gal. iv. 26, St. Paul contrasts Mount Zion, or the Jerusalem above, as the type of the christian church, with Mount Sinai, as the type of the Jewish. On which passage Macknight observes: "The catholic church, consisting of believers from all nations, which is formed on the covenant published from Mount Zion, is called the Jerusalem above, because its most perfect state will be in heaven." And Whitby on Heb. xii. 22; "It is styled the heavenly Jerusalem; not that heaven is primarily intended by it, and not the church of Christ on earth but propter originem et finem, as having its rise from heaven, and leading to it."

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3 Phil. iii. 20, John xvii. 14.-Compare Augustine's well-known similar view of the saints as the Civitas Dei, which," in terris peregrina, in cœlo fundata est." (Sermon on Luke xi. 9.) Also the beautiful view of them given in the Epistle to Diognetus, by an author, Justin Martyr's cotemporary :- Christians are not separated from others by country, by language, or by customs. They are confined to no particular cities, use no particularity of speech, adopt no singularity of life. Dwelling in the cities, as every man's lot is cast, following the H 3

Vol. i.

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