John Nelson Darby

“ Far other is the minister of strict earthly righteousness, the earthly Jerusalem—“the people and nations that will not serve thee shall utterly perish.” Now this heavenly rule, withal, is recognized as the source of power. The kings of the earth bring their glory to it, not to corrupt Babylon, to their disgrace and ruin. ”

“ Satan is cast down from heaven; but here, all that he raises on earth against the Lamb, is cast into the lake of fire and Satan himself is bound in the bottomless pit, the history of the earth not being yet finished. The coming of Jesus, whose judgment acts on the beast and false prophet, is not the same as the angel of God’s providence and power, casting Satan into the pit. The glory and reigning of the Son of man seems to vindicate God as regards the failure of the Noah world. ”

“ The dragon has now lost his place in heaven. He cannot rule the world, as thence, as the prince and god of it: but he comes as a woe and judgment from God, upon those whose end is to be destruction, and so has unlimited power over them ”

“ I have no doubt the principles of Babylon were manifested in her,—not royal power. Though Babylon was the beginning of his power in whom royal power was first displayed, yet it was specially what the confederate will of man had done; its first form was confederate will in independence of God. This is shewn in the character which constituted the whore, yet had its development by her corruption and fornication: and the effects of this are supplanted by another confederacy, which is not only apostasy, as all human will apart from God is, but active war against God’s king, the Lamb. ”

“ These angels had the character of perfect righteousness both Divine and human—the golden girdle in which the certain energy and pure power of Divine righteousness is maintained and vindicated—and white robes, in which the spotlessness of human sanctity and faultlessness, as of God, is expressed. One of these now comes to shew the prophet the judgment of the great whore that is seated, in her malignant influence, on the masses of peoples. ”

“ But there is another very interesting point in this character of the heavenly Jerusalem, the Lamb’s bride, the perfection and blessedness of mediatorial glory. First God and the Lamb are the light of it—they enjoy the immediate light of glory—the nations of the spared ones walk in the light of it, i.e. of the heavenly Jerusalem—the Lamb’s wife—the glorified Saints. It is not merely “nations shall come to the brightness of its rising”—the acknowledgment of a new and dominant power owned of God and glorified in the earth—it is proper blessing, “they walk in the light of it.” ”

“ When we have ascertained, by the aid of the Spirit of Christ, the mind of God, we have, as far as it be history, God’s estimate of events and their explanation. But history is man’s estimate of events, and he has no right to assume that these are in prophecy at all; and it is clear that he must understand prophecy, before he can apply it to any. When he understands it, he has what God meant to give him without going farther, I do not admit history to be, in any sense, necessary to the understanding of prophecy. ”

“ A manifested plague from God fell on the men who had received the mark of the beast, and who worshipped his image. Next, all form of life was turned into death in the mass of the population—“and every living soul” (they are not spoken of as written in the book of life; but those who externally had life) “died.” The profession of being alive to God was blotted out of the mass of unformed nations.
The sources of the state of the population became also the form and power of death; the just judgment of those who had put the saints to death. ”

“ Thus, it was power of calling in judgment suited to the respective position of the two; one, acting on the world out of which God’s people were called; the other, judging the people which had become the world, by arresting their enjoyment of blessings from heaven; both have their application to the state of things alluded to in this short but comprehensive prophecy.
At the close of the three years and a half, their sackcloth testimony ceased by their death, through the hands of the beast of the bottomless pit; when they shall have fulfilled their testimony. ”

“ Thus, in Babylon we have wealth, corruption, sorceries, arts, luxuries, bodies and souls of men sold, fornication committed with the kings and dwellers upon earth, and they made drunk with it: [4] the principle of confederate will, but the corruption not the exercise of royal secular power as of God though it might, by seduction, rule and govern this power, and thus separate it from its Divine source, and actually set aside and hinder the unqualified assertion of its supremacy, as of God over all. ”

“ As the Church instantly broke forth in answer on the Church revelation of Jesus, in exactly corresponding praises to His then revealed character, so now, on the revelation of His millennial and glorified character, it breaks forth by the Spirit which never leaves it, let it be ever so desolate, but rather inspires it with hope in the answering and suitable cry of “Come!” and then looks round, in the sense of this, to renew its service of grace to the world. ”

“ The gainsaying is recorded as the gainsaying of Kore, not of Dathan and Abiram, though the earth might swallow them up too; and the beast may be judged as well as Babylon, but not presented in the same sad terms in God’s moral judgment, in the sight of men. Moral corruption is ever worse than evil power. Babylon was also the mother of harlots, and of the abominations or idolatries of the earth. ”

“ It was the judgment of the word which proceeded out of his mouth: they died by that. The proper application of this is, to those who were against Him, as coming from heaven to judge those who were directly under the influence and power of apostasy. Still, the kings of the earth is wider than the ten kings, and left general: I doubt, however, whether it includes Gog, whose aim is against the land rather than the Lamb, or even the Prince of princes. With Gog, it is the gratification of covetousness—the lust of possessing. ”

“ Satan, in his character of anti-priest, had been unceasing in his accusations against the brethren; though, in the course of God’s dealings with the saints, during this time of trial, he had suffered their being even put to death here below; yet they had overcome their enemy there really, as to all the questions which Satan could raise before God. The accusations were of no avail through the blood of the Lamb. Satan could not overthrow their conscience; and by the word of their testimony they maintained the truth and righteousness against him as the father of lies ”

“ This is the Church’s place through the recognition of Sonship, while the throne is above. But it is not in union and headship, but kingdom and patience. Still, in whatever form, the word she ministers is the word of God or the testimony of Jesus Christ.
Lordship in itself is not the highest title of Christ: “God hath made Him both Lord and Christ.” To us there is but one God, the Father, and one Lord Jesus Christ. ”

“ He comes in here as the eighth head of the beast, supplanting the woman. The kings lay her waste to give their power to him; for power, not wealth, is the last form of evil presented, and that against the Lamb, which is true, active rebellion, and more than mere apostasy. God therefore judges Babylon; and the destroyers of her wealth and importance are those who give their kingdom to the beast: thereupon and then, the war against the Lamb comes. ”

“ If the saints meddle with its principles and avenge themselves here, they must suffer its consequences here: “they that take the sword shall perish with the sword.” Patient suffering is the saints’ place as Christ’s. [11] They are not to take the beast’s character, because they suffer under it: it is warring with God’s providential government—which leaves him thus to practise: the book of life is the book of life of the Lamb slain. Such was the grand secular power recognised in connection with the purpose and plans of God during this time—to which Satan’s throne and power was given. ”

“ The destruction and judgment of the great city involved the ruin of all mere secular interests—wealth—all that was Tyrian in its character—though souls of men had been added to that renowned city’s traffic ”

“ There is a great principle connected with all this working and character of the beast upon earth, he that leadeth into captivity shall go there; so it will be with him: but God will not depart from his principles. He that uses the oppressing power shall be oppressed: the Lord will judge it, be it where it may; “she that killeth with the sword shall be killed with the sword.” The saints’ part is to suffer, to endure the continuance of evil, while God permits it, and power is given to it. ”

“ There are three parties engaged in the evil—the beast, who kills the witnesses—the nations and kindreds, who do not suffer them to be buried, exhibiting the natural hostility of the human heart—and the people upon earth, whom the testimony of the witnesses had specially tormented. For the testimony of Holy consistency and prophetic nearness to God, is continual torment to them to whom the testimony comes, for their apostasy: the prophet, in this character, is always a witness that, with all their pride and self-satisfaction, they are apostate ”

“ We have to look, here, at the people of God, as in his own mind or purpose, and therefore glorified in that; yet, as we have said, entering into the detail of consequences, it is in the ministration of it, for it is the man by the woman, not the woman for the man; both have their importance and their place. Hence the woman is seen clothed with supreme authority—the Divine or heavenly splendor of supreme authority, and all derivative light and rule under her feet ”

“ The harvest and vintage are two acts of judgment, the harvest being of much wider scope; and, accordingly, in it there is not clear riddance of the corners of the field as to the wheat. It may distinctively clear and take the wicked, leaving those spared for earthly blessing. The vintage is pure vengeance on a specific object (the ecclesiastical body) , which has its character from earth: in the crisis, I apprehend, Jewish. ”

“ Æneas and Tabitha are the witnesses of his power; and the calling of the Gentiles is by his mouth, that the witness of the Jewish stock might still be preserved in grace, whatever the righteous justice of the dispensation might do in judgment (and so in dispensation the faithful partake of the ruin of the unfaithful, as Caleb and Joshua must wander in the wilderness) —and thereon extraordinary intervention might effect, besides, in one born out of due time, the witness of prerogative grace in the disorder of the dispensation, as to man. ”

“ It is the enmity, we are to remark, of the dragon and serpent, not the woes on the earth which are described; that is reserved for more detailed account in what follows, at least as to the part material for the Church’s instruction in its passage towards it. And here I must remark the extreme importance to us of connecting the events and agents in the crisis, in principle, character, and progress, with what is passing and the agents we see around us, or it loses its main moral effect, and its whole use for the Church. The Church is not under this woe, I believe, at all, in the final crisis. ”

“ They were redeemed from among men from the earth—a peculiar people in the power of their lives, in the midst of those professors, while Babylon stood—not the reign of Christ in blessing, not the wide-spread promulgation of the Gospel, but in purity as an undefiled few, following the Lamb, the holy sufferer. ”

“ Living water is the Spirit; but as this acts by the word, water (not exactly living water) is doctrine, and in a good sense the word; but waters are peoples, tongues, nations and languages, and the sea the unformed mass of them. Hence rivers seem the different compartments of them, as “whose land the rivers have spoiled.” But I take it, water is always viewed as under active moral influences of some sort, when living (it may be) in power; when the sea, it may be acted on merely; when fountains, it may be the spring of their influences, as the rivers would be their course ”

“ From this, we see the partakers of the first resurrection entirely exempt: then Satan’s actings, as introducing the first millennial judgment [2] are mentioned, and that judgment itself. On the great white throne (for there were no thrones now) , sat One from whose face heaven and earth fled away. This therefore, was no coming at all. No judgment πῆς οίκουμέμης, of the habitable world as a scene, nor a judgment of the quick. The dead small and great stand before God, and they are judged out of the books, according to their works. ”

“ For he comes personally victorious: but here, while the beast comes against the witnesses who stand before the God of the earth, they are overcome, because the Lamb has not yet come forth in power, nor the earthly kingdom come. Lucifer shall rise up against the Lord from heaven, and be cast down. When his representative rises against the witnesses and representatives of the Lord—these two anointed ones—they are cast down and killed, and taken to heaven where the glory and the Lamb yet were: it was the last external public act of testimony—whether for the dispensation or the crisis ”

“ The things that are, then, are the seven candlesticks and the seven stars—mystic perfection and actual imperfection; the Church never losing its mystic perfection in the mind of God, but when it has to be addressed on earth—to be addressed as so many separate bodies, and often with reproofs and threatenings. ”

“ He can no longer accuse the brethren: he persecutes the woman; and, at this period upon earth, the woman is the Jewish Church—the woman that brought forth the man, for that was true of the Jewish economy as to Christ, looked at in his title of power upon earth,—“To us a Son is born.” But here, to the woman is given force and speed from God; but only to flee into the wilderness, where she is nourished for the allotted period, which, speaking as to the closing crisis, is three years and a half ”