The Analogy of Scripture

THE ANALOGY OF SCRIPTURE

But there is weightier reason still for the view we are here taking. It is found in the voice of Scripture it- self. For the symbols of the horses and of the wild beasts are used in Old Testament prophecy, the former in Zechariah, and the latter in Daniel. The symbols of the beasts are explained in Chapters 7 and 8 of Daniel’s prophecy, so there is happily no room for question as to their meaning. The four great beasts that Daniel saw were four Kingdoms or world-powers that were to arise out of the earth (Dan. 7:17). Each one of those empires lasted many times seven years; and the last of them (the Roman) more than twice seven centuries. In the case of the Macedonian em- pire, we have in the meteoric career of Alexander the Great, a conquest of extraordinary rapidity, insomuch that it is represented by a he-goat moving so swiftly that he “touched not the ground” (Dan. 8 5–8). Yet

the full development of the small part of human his- tory that is represented by- that beast, required cen- turies of time.

This should suffice to establish the matter; but the evidence is stronger yet. For it has been noticed by all commentators and indeed is too plain to escape attention, that the first beast of Revelation 13 closely resembles the fourth of Daniel 7, and has, moreover, some characteristic of each of the other three. Now practically all expositors are agreed that Daniel’s fourth beast represents the Roman Empire, which was slow in its rising and development, and which occupied the stage of history for a period of many centuries. Daniel saw this beast, so ‘“‘dreadful, terrible and strong’’ rise up out of the sea (Dan. 7:3); and John too saw a beast of the same description, only delineated more clearly, ‘“‘arise up out of the sea.’’ Can we close our eyes to these marked resemblances, and go so con- trary to the clear indications they furnish, as to assign to the entire career of John’s beast but a fraction of the utterly insignificant period of seven years? Would anyone do such a thing unless bound hand and foot by a theory of interpretation which requires it?

But looking further we observe that, as Daniel con- sidered the horns of this fourth beast, a remarkable development took place. Another “little horn’? came up among them, having eyes like the eyes of a man, and a mouth speaking great things. And Daniel was par- ticularly impressed ‘because of the voice of the great words which the horn spake’. We are not for the

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moment concerned with the question who (or what) that little horn represented. Regardless of how that question may be answered, the development was one that required a long period of time, to which must be added the period of the career of the little horn. Now there is just such a development in John’s vision; for after giving various details concerning the beast with the seven heads and ten horns—details that suggest ex- tended periods of time for their fulfilment—John speaks of seeing another beast coming up out of the earth, whose speech was that of a dragon. So here is something which, by analogy with Daniel’s vision, must require for its fulfilment a long stretch of years. Further it should be observed that John saw the actual rising up of each of these beasts, one after the other. Therefore the vision embraces in its scope the entire career of each of the two beasts. ‘This fact alone would seem to be fatal to the futurist system of interpretation; for the futurists are agreed that the symbol of the ten-horned beast represents the Roman Empire. ‘True, they say it represents only the very last stage of that Empire, the “revived Roman Em- pire’, as it is generally expressed. But that restricted view of the significance of the symbol is not compatible with the statements that John saw the first beast actu- ally coming upon the scene—“rise up out of the sea’”»— and that later on he “beheld another beast coming up out of the earth.” These words declare in the clearest way that his vision embraced the actual coming into

existence of the things represented by the two beasts respectively.

The futurist system should be tested also Bs what the Scriptures, both Old and New Testaments, declare to be one of the chief purposes for which prophecies are given, a matter to which the Lord Jesus Himself made repeated reference. ‘Thus, through Moses, this test of true prophecy was given: ‘‘And if thou shalt say in thine heart, how shall we know the word which the Lord hath not spoken? When a prophet speaketh in the name of the Lord, if the thing follow not, nor come to pass, that is the thing which the Lord hath not spoken” (Deut. 18:21, 22). ‘To the same effect the Lord Jesus said, “Now I tell you before it come, that when it 1s come to pass, ye may believe that I am he’; and again, “And now I have told you before it come to — pass, that, when it is come to pass, ye might believe’; and yet again, “But these things have I told you, that when the time shall come, ye may remember that I told you of them” (John 13:19; 14:29; 16:4).

Thus prophecy is given that the faith of the people of God may be strengthened by the happening of the thing predicted. It is eminently suited to that end, being as clear a manifestation of Divine action as the working of a miracle. It is hardly necessary to point out that the postponement wholesale of the prophecies of this Book to a yet future dispensation would frus- trate this important purpose, if indeed they were to be fulfilled in the christian era. Therefore we should

34. | The Patmos Visions

refuse the futurist view until it is established by full and clear evidence.

Tue “MissInc WEEK” OF DANIEL’s VISION

It is one of the fundamental assumptions of the futurist system of interpretation that the last of the “Seventy Weeks” of Daniel 9:24–27 did not follow the sixty-ninth, but was detached from the others, and put off to the end of this present dispensation, and will fit into the course of time immediately after the catching away of the people of God (the “‘rapture’’) to meet the Lord in the air. This is spoken of as the “missing week”’; and in this supposed “missing week’”’ (seven years) all the stupendous events, epochs and eras of Revelation IV to XIX are to take place, according to the futurist system. I shall not discuss this fanciful idea in the present volume, -having considered it at some length in my book, ‘“‘The Seventy Weeks and the Great Tribulation’.

WHat JOHN Was CHARGED TO WRITE

The futurist view rests mainly upon a peculiar in- terpretation of Chapter 1:19, “Write the things which thou hast seen, and the things which are, and the things which shall be hereafter’. The futurists regard John’s commission to write, given him in these words of Christ, as having three distinct and separate divisions. They further hold, and this is necessary to their sys- tem, that by “the things which thou hast seen” He meant only the vision described in Chapter 1, verses

12–16; that by “‘the things which are”, He meant only what we have in Chapters II and III, the letters to the seven churches of Asia; and that by ‘‘the things which shall be hereafter’, He meant events which then lay in the far distant future, wholly beyond this present dispensation. |

This is a very artificial interpretation of the pas- sage; and certainly it is far too questionable and too much open to dispute to serve as a foundation for what has been built upon it.

1. “The things which thou hast seen’. These words may indeed be limited to the single vision of Christ described in verses 12–18, though many commentators give them a meaning broad enough to include all the visions of the Book. I am not satisfied, however, by the reasoning which gives this clause so broad a mean- ing, and which requires us to assume that the introduc- tion was written after the main portion of the Book. But we have to take notice of the words of verse 11, spoken before John had turned and seen the vision of Christ in the midst of the candlesticks: ‘‘What thou seest write in a book and send it unto the seven churches which are in Asia’”’. This lends strong support to those who hold that the commission our Lord gave to John at this time related only to the messages to the seven churches, that is to say, to the first three chapters of the Apocalypse, and who point out that the letters to the churches contain things then future, as well as things present. So there is a serious question at the very threshold of our present inquiry, though while I

admit the matter is not entirely clear, my opinion is that what we have in Chapter I is intended as the in- troduction to the entire Book, and not to the first sec- tion thereof only.

2. “And the things which are’. ‘This clause lends no support to the futurist view. Indeed it would be difficult to find a less appropriate title for the contents of Chapters II and II]. What the futurist system, as based on its interpretation of 1:19, absolutely requires is that there should be a clearly marked division of the Book describing matters occurring in this present dispensation, ending with the coming of Christ for His people; and following that, another division describ- ing events that are to happen thereafter. But we find nothing of that sort. What we do find is that the two chapters which the futurists arbitrarily designate ‘things which are’, differ from the chapters that fol- low not as regards the time of occurrence of the things they describe, but as regards their subject matter. For Chapters II and III have to do exclusively with the churches of Christ. Their scope is limited strictly to things ecclesiastical. On the other hand, the subse- quent chapters have nothing at all to do with the churches. Their scope, so far as they relate to matters on earth, is limited to the affairs of the nations of the world. This objection is fatal to the futurist system, since it is evident that, whatever be the nature of the “things which are’, the “things which shall be here- after’, are things of the same kind. Furthermore, Chapters II and III do not contain any description

whatever of things as they were at that time. They are wholly occupied with letters to the angels of the seven churches of Asia. And those letters are not taken up with descriptions of things as they then were, but the contents of one and all consists in commenda- tions, rebukes, promises, exhortations, and threaten- ings. hen again, they refer not only to the then pres- ent state of these several churches, but also to things past, and things that were yet to happen. Furthermore, the references they contain to things as they then were are not to “‘things which are’ in general, but only in respect to the churches of Christ, and not to all of these, but to seven churches in the province of Asia. And finally, if we limit this clause, by reason of the context, to the churches of Asia, then to be consistent we should impose the same limitation upon the words ‘the things which shall be hereafter’, which would be destructive of the futurist system. For it is clear that the clauses ‘‘things which are’’, and ‘“‘things which shall be hereafter’, are strictly parallel, the difference be- tween them being not at all in the nature of the ‘things’ themselves, but solely in the time of their occurrence. And since the things of Chapters IV to XXII have nothing to do with the affairs of the seven churches of Pro-consular Asia, or of any churches whatever, it is clear that it is inadmissable to take the words “things which are”’ as an inspired definition of messages which deal with the affairs—past, present, and future—of the seven designated churches. What also bears heavily against the futurist view. of the

words “‘things which are’, is the fact that a charge to ‘Write’ is given to John at the beginning of each of the seven letters of Chapters II and III. This makes it highly improbable that the words, ‘‘write—the things which are’, had any relation to those letters. Therefore, in view of all this, I can but give it as my deep conviction that the futurist system fails com- pletely at this point.

3. “And the things which shall be hereafter’.

Here is where the futurist scheme is weakest; for it absolutely requires that the familiar and well-under- stood word “hereafter” be given a novel meaning, one that, so far as I am informed, it never bears. The word as we here find it, is unqualified by other words which might affect its meaning. Hence there is no jus- tification whatever for taking it to mean historical events, all of which lay in a future and far distant dis- pensation. For to-morrow is just as much “hereafter” as two thousand years hence.

According to the futurist system, the “things which shall be hereafter’ are those described in Chapters IV to XXII. That is to say, all that is foretold in those chapters is to be fulfilled in the next dispensation.’ But it is certain that the word “hereafter”? does not have the effect of transporting all those things across the twenty centuries of our era and locating them in the next dispensation; and if the word “hereafter” does not have that effect, we shall look in vain for anything else capable of accomplishing such a prodigious dis- location.

The first verse of Chapter IV ends with the signifi- cant word “hereafter”. Let us carefully note what it says, for just here is the crux of the matter.

“After this I looked, and behold, a door was opened in heaven; and the first voice that I heard was as it were of a trumpet talking with me; which said, Come up hither, and I will show thee things which must be hereafter’.

From the last five words of this verse it is reason- able to infer that the visions John was now summoned on high to see were “the things which shall be here- after’, an account of which he was charged in Chapter 1:19 to write. And here again the familiar word ‘hereafter’ is used without any qualifying terms, and with nothing whatever in the context to suggest that it is to be understood in any other than its ordinary sense. The statement is plain and the meaning unambiguous. John was taken up to heaven “‘in the spirit” (2.2), in order that he might be shown things that were to be thereafter, that is, from that time onward.

So far from there being anything in either the text or context to suggest that the word “hereafter’’ is to be given an extraordinary and unheard of signification, the fact is that the verse itself contains a sufficient rea- son for rejecting that idea as altogether untenable. For the phrase rendered “hereafter” (meta tauta) occurs also at the beginning of the verse, where it is rendered ‘‘After this”. Thus the verse begins and ends with identically the same phrase, a phrase which is capable of being expressed in English by “hereafter”,

‘thereafter’ or ‘‘after this’, or ‘‘after these things’, the last being the most literal rendering.

Now no one would maintain for a moment that the first meta tauta means after a lapse of several thousand years; and it is perfectly obvious that the passage affords just as much warrant for locating John’s trans- lation in spirit to heaven in the next dispensation, as for locating in that far distant day the things, and all of them, which he was given to see. For here we have a simple adverbial phrase which is twice used in the very same sentence. All must agree that where it first occurs it has its ordinary meaning, and that there is nothing whatever to indicate or to suggest a different meaning at its second occurrence. We are therefore bound to give it the same meaning at the end of the verse as at the beginning.

It should be noted that the words of this verse do not state or imply that the visions John was to see contained future things exclusively, but only that they had to do mainly with future things. For when the visions themselves are studied it will be seen that some of them start from events that had already taken place, and from those past events as a starting point, they carry us on to future things. In Chapter XII, for ex- ample, we have a panorama of a course of events that has its starting point in the first chapter of Genesis. It is true indeed that the design of the Book is to reveal future things; and it will be seen that past events are brought in only in order that the future things may be

set in their proper place in the particular line of his- torical events to which they severally belong.

Some have taken the words of Christ recorded in Revelation 1:19 as giving to John his complete com- mission for the writing of the three different parts of the New Testament whereof he was the scribe. They point out that the Gospel of John contains the things whereof John was an eye-witness—‘‘the things which thou hast seen—’’; that his Epistles deal with things as they were in his lifetime—‘‘things which are—’’; and that the Revelation contains things that were to happen thereafter—‘‘things which shall be hereafter’. This suggestion is worthy at least of thoughtful con- sideration; for there is nothing fanciful about it, it agrees with the facts, and it does no violence to the inspired language.

But, taking the verse as applying solely to the Book of the Revelation of Jesus Christ, we have only to read that verse according to a construction frequently used in the Greek language, and in the New Testa- ment, in order to get a clear meaning. The point to be noted is that where, in English, clauses are con- nected by the conjunctions ‘‘both—and’’, or “‘even— and’’, in Greek it is ‘‘and—and”’. Thus the verse may with perfect propriety be rendered: ‘‘Write the things which thou hast seen, both (or even) the things which are, and also the things which shall be hereafter’. This construction is frequently used by the Lord, as recorded by John. Thus in John 4:36 we have, ‘“‘That both he that soweth and he that reapeth may rejoice

together’; and in 7:28, “Ye both know Me, and ye know whence I am’’; and in 15:24, “But now have they both seen and hated both Me and My Father”’.

Finally as regards this interesting point, we would call attention to the striking similarity between the commission the Lord here gives to His servant John from the glory, and the one which He had previously given Paul from the glory. For the commission given to Paul was likewise divided into two parts, things he had already seen, and things which were to be shown him thereafter. These are the Lord’s words to Paul: ‘For I have appeared unto thee for this purpose, to make thee a minister and a witness both of these things which thou hast seen, and of those things in the which I will appear unto thee’ (Acts 26:16).

In this connection there is a distinction which must be carefully observed in order to a right understand- ing of the plan of the Book. I refer to the difference between the order in which the visions were seen by John and described by him, and the order of the hap- pening of the things revealed in the visions. For the order or sequence of the several visions shown to the seer is one thing, and the order or sequence of occur- rence of the events symbolized is another thing; and through failure to observe this, certain commentators have been led into confusion. Thus, because the vision of the trumpets followed that of the seals, it has been assumed by some that the events of the trumpet-pro- gram begin where those of the seals left off; and so with the program of the vials. But by careful exam-

ination of the several programs it will be seen that the distinction between the several groups is topical, rather than chronological. ‘That is to say, under the symbols of the seven seals is grouped a series of events of a certain character, under the trumpets another series of a different character, and under the vials an- other of a still different sort. It is evident, of course, that the events of each program follow in regular or- der, corresponding to the order in which their respec- tive symbols appear. That is to say, the events sym- bolized under the first trumpet are followed by those symbolized under the second, and so on to the end of the seven. But it does not follow that the events of the first trumpet come next in order after those of the seventh seal. On the contrary it is quite plain that the sixth seal brings us to the day of wrath (‘‘For the great day of His wrath is come’, 6:17), whereas in following the line of developments under the trumpets, the day of wrath is not reached until we come to the days of the voice of the seventh angel, when we have the announcement, “And Thy wrath is come, and the time of the dead that they should be judged” (11:18). Since therefore the seventh trumpet (“the last trump”’, 1 Cor. 15:52) synchronizes with the sixth seal, it is clear that the two programs overlap, and that we must look for the events of the preceding six trumpets in the period of the first five seals.

This important feature of the plan of the Book first came to my knowledge when I noticed that a distinct topic begins at Chapter XII, namely, God’s purpose in

44. The Patmos Visions

the creation of man, and that the panoramic vision of that chapter traces the development of that purpose, and the various attempts of the great Adversary to de- feat it, from the beginning to the end. I was thus led to see that in other divisions of the Book the events symbolized are grouped with reference to their char- acter, rather than with reference to time—that is to say, topically rather than chronologically. ‘This will ap- pear as we proceed; and it will be seen, I think, that the recognition of this feature of the plan of the Book, which has been pointed out by many commentators be- fore myself, affords material help toward the under- standing of its entire contents.

THE DATE OF THE APOCALYPSE

As to the time of the writing of the Book there is no need of a review of the evidence. While there has been some dispute about it, there appears to be ample support for the generally accepted view that the Book was written near the end of the first century, and that John’s banishment to the Island of Patmos was during the persecution that broke out in the reign of the em- peror Domitian, A. D. 81–95. Those who, like the Romanist expositors, wish to find the fulfilment of the judgments foretold by John in the destruction of Jeru- salem, seek support for the view that John’s banish- ment to Patmos, and the writing of the Apocalypse, were during the persecution that broke out in the reign

of Nero (A. D. 54–68). But the available evidence

lends no support to that view, the motive for which is quite apparent.

CHAPTER II