Apocalypse

“ Nevertheless, even then I was greatly, though vaguely, impressed by the mysterious imagery, the cloudy grandeurs, of the Apocalypse. Deeply uncomprehended, it was, of course, the pageantry of an appalling dream; insurgent darkness, with wild lights flashing through it; terrible phantasms, insupportably revealed against profound light, and in a moment no more; on the earth hurryings to and fro, like insects of the earth at a sudden candle ”

“ Emboldened by his gaze into the past, this petty race, children of yesterday, can overstep chaos, can raise a psalm without end, and outline for themselves the story of the Universe in an Apocalypse that reveals the past. ”

“ The book of the Apocalypse is unlike any other book of the New Testament—and is full of consolation and instruction to all who read its inspired and prophetic words. It lifts the soul up to the beauty and grandeur of Heaven—shows us in all their glory the joys and triumphs of those who were once like ourselves—but who are now changed and happy with those "who have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb." ”

“ No undulation, no wrinkle, no projection changed its shape or moved its place. The aspect of this immobility in movement was impressive. The sun, pale in the midst of a strange sickly transparence, lighted up this outline of the Apocalypse. Already the cloudy bank had blotted out one half the space of the sky: shelving like the fearful talus of the abyss. It was the uprising of a dark mountain between earth and heaven. ”

“ In the fearful imagery of the Apocalypse the terrors are deepened by there falling "from heaven a great star burning as a torch," and by the stars of heaven falling "unto the earth as a fig-tree casteth her unripe figs when she is shaken of a great wind." ”

“ The people knew not What manner of man was passing by their doors, Until he passed no more; but in his vision He saw the torments and beatitudes Of souls condemned or pardoned, and hath left Behind him this sublime Apocalypse. ”

“ For Christians, the vision of the Apocalypse contains the ultimate word on 'the philosophy of history.' It is 'the Lamb before the Throne,' who opens the roll with the seven seals, and lets the powers of whom it speaks loose for their march through the world. ”

“ I often wonder whose was the mind that conceived the visions of the Apocalypse; [Pg 124] if we can trust tradition, it was a confined and exiled Christian in a lonely island, whose spirit reached out beyond the little crags and the beating seas of his prison, and in the seeming silent heaven detected the gathering of monsters, the war of relentless forces—and beyond it all the radiant energies of saints, glad to be together and unanimous, in a place where light and beauty at last could reign triumphant. ”

“ To leave this known world with a feeble cry, All its poor jarring and ignoble strife. O that some shadowy spectre would disclose The Future, and the soul’s confineless hunger Satisfy with some knowledge of repose! For here the lust of avarice waxeth stronger, Making life hateful; youth alone is true, Full of a glorious self-forgetfulness: Better to die inhabiting the new Kingdom of faith and promise, and confess, Even in the agony and last eclipse, Some revelation of the Apocalypse! ”

“ Apocalypse which excited and fostered them was a popular volume: but as years passed away and the general longing of Christians, eagerly marking the signs of the times, was again and again disappointed, and the hope of a Millennium began either to be abandoned or indefinitely postponed, the Apocalypse proportionately lost favour, or was regarded as an incomprehensible book misleading the world by illusory promises. ”

“ It is astonishing that any intelligent person can peruse the Apocalypse and still suppose that it is occupied with prophecies of remote events, events to transpire successively in distant ages and various lands. ”

“ The Apocalypse is one of the most sublime and wonderful dramatic exhibitions presented for human contemplation. Internal evidence concurs with authentic history, in demonstrating to the devout and intelligent reader, its divine origin. God, angels and men, are the principal actors. ”

“ The Apocalypse contains simply a series of visions intended to exhibit, with all the force of that inspiration under which the Seer wrote, certain great truths connected with the revelation in humanity of the Eternal Son. ”

“ And there was no kind of message so well suited to meet such a crisis as the form of Apocalyptic, which grew out of similar conditions, and had a tone and temper peculiarly adapted to infuse a triumphant hope in the midst of growing religious despair.49 But let us not fail to perceive that though the Apocalypse was specially designed to meet a great crisis in the life of the early church, its effectiveness does not end there. ”

“ Lord have thrown much light on the nature and laws of symbols, by unfolding the principles in accordance with which they are used. The evolving of these has removed from many passages the obscurity which had before caused them to be regarded as enigmatical. There are, doubtless, many portions of the Apocalypse, the meaning of which is as yet only dimly perceived, and which will be more clearly unfolded by the transpiring of future events ”

“ Hence the prophecies of the Apocalypse should be a source of consolation when we see the Church opposed and persecuted for we have the assurance of the Holy Ghost that she shall come forth triumphant and reign peacefully over all nations. ”

“ And the angel thrust in his sharp sickle into the earth and gathered the vineyard of the earth and cast it into the great press of the wrath of God:
14:20. And the press was trodden without the city, and blood came out of the press, up to the horses' bridles, for a thousand and six hundred furlongs.
Apocalypse Chapter 15
They that have overcome the beast glorify God. Of the seven angels with the seven vials.
15:1. And I saw another sign in heaven, great and wonderful: seven angels having the seven last plagues. For in them is filled up the wrath of God. ”

“ The Purpose of the Apocalypse, as indicated by its introductory words “The Revelation”, is the revealing or unveiling of mystery. In the Christian sense a mystery is a former secret of divine truth that has now been at least partially revealed (Eph. 3:1-11) , while an apocalypse is the process of revealing it, and also the revelation itself containing the truth made known. ”

“ And the light of the lamp shall shine no more at all in thee: and the voice of the bridegroom and the bride shall be heard no more at all in thee. For thy merchants were the great men of the earth: for all nations have been deceived by thy enchantments.
18:24. And in her was found the blood of prophets and of saints and of all that were slain upon the earth.
Apocalypse Chapter 19
The saints glorify God for his judgments on the great harlot. Christ's victory over the beast and the kings of the earth. ”

“ That it was the lurid clouds of Apocalypse, which thus hemmed in our prophet’s view, is clear from the next verses. They bring the terrible manifestations of God’s wrath in nature very closely upon the lavish outpouring of the Spirit: the sun turned to darkness and the moon to blood, the great and terrible Day [Pg 430] of the Lord. ”

“ We place, therefore, little reliance upon the argument derived from the time of life at which the Apocalypse was composed, though Olshausen and Guerike insist upon it. Written, as they think, twenty years before the Gospel or Epistles, the Apocalypse exhibits marks of inexperience in writing, of youthful fire, and of an ardent temperament. ”

“ Poor Humanity, crazed with fear, was fleeing in all directions on hearing the thundering pace of the Plague, War, Hunger and Death. Men and women, young and old, were knocking each other down and falling to the ground overwhelmed by terror, astonishment and desperation. ”

“ That the seven spirits of the Apocalypse have direct relation to the seven occult powers in nature, appears incomprehensible and absurd to their feeble intellects; and the bare thought of a magician claiming to work wonders through certain kabalistic rites convulses them with laughter. ”

“ This consciousness receives perhaps its strongest expression in the Apocalypse.
There is really no contradiction between this sense of a high calling and mission, with a special endowment corresponding to it, and the other fact that the writings from this age that have come down to us are all (except perhaps the Apocalypse, and even the Apocalypse, in some degree, as we see by the letters to the Seven Churches) strictly occasional and natural in their origin. The lives and actions of apostles and prophets were in their general tenor like those of other men ”

“ Fragment Hypothesis.—The previous theories have brought to light and emphasized the fact that within the Apocalypse there are passages inconsistent with the tone and character of the whole. But, notwithstanding this fact, the Apocalypse gives a strong impression of its unity. Thus apparently the only remaining theory which can account for both these phenomena is that at which we have now arrived, i.e. the fragment hypothesis. ”

“ Apocalypse, is clearly brought out in this introductory passage before the vials have begun to be poured out, and is not interjected between them, as in the episodes that occur in the seals and trumpets—the episode in the vision of the vials being a warning of danger. ”

“ This divergence of opinion has had the unfortunate effect of disparaging the worth of the Apocalypse as a part of the Word of God in the mind of many earnest students, who have come to regard its meaning as so obscure, and hidden in such hopeless perplexity, that any further attempt to interpret it is entirely fruitless. ”

“ The Apocalypse has also a historical value, quite apart from its general meaning and use, that we should not overlook, for it throws important light upon the political and social conditions as well as the inner thought and development of the Christian church in the latter part of the first century. ”

“ Any one may see that the Apocalypse could no how be explained but by the Lord alone, since every word of it contains arcana, which never could be known without some special illumination, and consequent revelation ”

“ The Apocalypse, from which the plate is taken, is a French work of the middle of the fourteenth century, showing a good deal of the feeling of the preceding century, but tending visibly towards the manner of the time when Charles V of France and his brothers were associated with manuscripts of an unusually beautiful kind. ”

“ The rest of the dead lived not, till the thousand years were finished. This is the first resurrection.
6. Blessed and holy is he that hath part in the first resurrection. In these the second death hath no power; but they shall be priests of God and of Christ; and shall reign with him a thousand years.
1-3. Chapters ix-xix form an important part of the Apocalypse containing, as they do, an extended history of Antichrist and his warfare against the Church. As a preparation for his coming, the star fallen from heaven opens the abyss whence comes forth a great swarm of locusts. ”

“ The last two verses of chap. ix., which follow the sixth Trumpet, deserve our particular attention. They describe the effect produced upon the men who did not perish by the previous plagues, and they help to throw light upon a question most intimately connected with a just interpretation of the Apocalypse. The question is, Does the Seer, in any of his visions, anticipate the conversion of the ungodly? ”

“ Nor must we look for order in the Apocalypse; but we must follow the meaning of those things which are prophesied. Therefore in the trumpets and phials is signified either the desolation of the plagues that are sent upon the earth, or the madness of Antichrist himself, or the cutting off of the peoples, or the diversity of the plagues, or the hope in the kingdom of the saints, or the ruin of states, or the great overthrow of Babylon, that is, the Roman state. ”

“ This was a fundamental weakness of the Apocalyptic point of view, which found the proper design of the world in its speedy ending and not in its longer continuance, a mistake that unfortunately has been perpetuated in Christian thought as though it were fundamental to it, whereas the victory and the End may well be as far apart as the creation from the victory. The Apocalypse sounds the note of the End without hesitancy or discussion. ”

“ Let us pardon him his hope of a vain apocalypse, and of a second coming in great triumph upon the clouds of heaven. Perhaps these were the errors of others rather than his own; and if it be true that he himself shared the general illusion, what matters it, since his dream rendered him strong against death, and sustained him in a struggle, to which he might otherwise have been unequal? ”

“ A Record of Visions.—In what has just been said, the dominant peculiarity of the Apocalypse has already been indicated. The Apocalypse is no careful literary composition, pieced together from previous works of a similar character. ”

“ The Holy Spirit says, "Levi, who receiveth tithes, paid tithes in Abraham." (Heb. vii. 9, 10.) Elijah reappeared in the person of John the Baptist. (Matt. xi. 14.) Jezebel and Balaam were recognised in their wicked successors, (ch. ii. 14, 20.) But this is the very structure of the Apocalypse, being composed of hieroglyphics, that the free agency of the wicked might be left untrammelled, and the diligence of God's people might be tested in "searching the Scriptures."
5. But the rest of the dead lived not again until the thousand years were finished. This is the first resurrection. ”

“ Many men complacently interpreted the troubles of the fifth century as the tribulations predicted in the Apocalypse, and watched them develop with something like joy, since they must portend the close approach of the Second Advent of our Lord. ”

“ The first book of a popular character, ever issued from the American press, explaining the Apocalypse according to the standard mode, is a treatise on the Millennium, by the learned Professor Bush, of the New York University, in which he adopts the grand outlines of the plan above detailed, though I have not had the opportunity of ascertaining how it is, in the minor details. ”