Section II

1. The Scroll

It is scarcely necessary to remark that the occupant of the throne is the Deity, likened in chap. iv. 3, to a jasper and a sardine stone, emblematic of Spirit manifested in flesh. That chapter gives no intimation of this flesh having ever tasted of death; but in the fifth this great fact is brought out in connection with the scroll, as we shall see hereafter.

On the right of the manifested Deity was a scroll. It was written within and on the outside; and was sealed up. This was, doubtless, related to the same document as that referred to in Dan. xii. 4, 9, where it is written, “Shut up the words, and seal the book till the time of the end;” and “the words are closed up and sealed till the time of the end.” Daniel was not informed with how many seals, or if by one only it was sealed up; but simply that it was sealed. It was all the same to him whether it was sealed up with one seal or many; for a scroll closed and sealed up is unreadable till unrolled, and the sealing is opened. The catastrophe, or final series of events, revealed to Daniel belonged “to the time of the end.” He was instructed to look forward to that period, to which pertains the p. 53 apocalyptic “hour of judgment,” for the termination of the wonders and times treated of in his book, or scroll. What had been communicated to him was principally concerning his people and his holy city. He had heard that the Saints were to be overcome by the Little Horn of the Fourth Beast that has Eyes and Mouth; and that their subjugation was to continue until the Ancient of Days came with a cloud of attendants numbered by “a thousand thousands and ten thousand times ten thousand,” when the judgment would sit, and the fourth beast in body, head and horns should be destroyed by the burning flame of wrath proceeding from the cherubic throne of Deity. All this he had heard; nevertheless, there was a mystery closed up and sealed against his scrutiny that needed explication. What did that Little Horn with his Eyes like a man, and a mouth speaking great words against the Most High signify? Was the Ancient of Days by whom they were to be destroyed, Deity or angel; if the former, how manifested? If the latter, who was he? Who was that Son of Man brought before the Ancient of Days, to whom universal dominion upon earth is given? How could the conquered saints take the Kingdom under the whole heaven from the four beasts? These, and many other questions would suggest themselves to Daniel, which would only put him to grief, and place him beside the apostle John, who “shed many tears because no one was found worthy (and therefore able) to unroll and to read the scroll, nor to see it”—ch. v. 4. When Daniel saw the vision of his seventh chapter he said he “was grieved in spirit in the midst of the body, and the visions of his head troubled him;” and even after the meaning of what he saw was interpreted, he says his cogitations still troubled him much, and his countenance was changed. Thus if John and Daniel had been both in Patmos together studying “the matter” they would have been companions in tribulation consequent upon their fruitless investigations, and endeavors to unclose the words, and to unseal the scroll seen by the prophet in the first and third of Belshatzar’s reign, and in the third of Cyrus the Persian King. Nor would their grief have been assuaged until this day had the scroll at the right of Deity manifested in flesh, and occupying the throne, been withheld. John could have instructed Daniel concerning the Ancient of Days and the Son of Man; he could have enlarged his views concerning the Saints; and have given him skill and understanding in the mystery of the gospel preached to Abraham; but as to the relations of the saints to the then existing government; the taking out of the way that which hindered the revelation of “The King who should do according to his own will,” and in his empire p. 54 should honor a blaspheming god unknown to his pagan predecessors; as to the rise of the ten horns; the development of the Saracen and Turkish powers; the pouring out of that determined upon the desolator of the Holy Land and City; the coming of the Ancient of Days in power; the resurrection; the war of the great day of the Omnipotent; the co-operation of the Saints; the establishment of the Kingdom; and so forth; as to all these things John could give Daniel no connected and intelligible account. They were all written within and on the outside of that notable scroll on the right of the throne, or place of almighty power. In vision, or spirit, John looked wistfully upon that scroll, closely rolled up and exuberantly sealed. Daniel would have looked wistfully at it too; and so would all the saints, both their contemporaries and ours. And if all this company could have occupied synchronously with John his position in the vision, and their feelings could have been simultaneously expressed, on hearing the question “Who is worthy to unrol the scroll, and to loose its seals?” unreplied to by a solitary response; there would have been a universal lamentation and shedding of tears abundantly. In saying this, I speak of the Saints of all ages and generations who are such in reality, and not merely in pretense. The saints of the Deity, or “his servants,” who are such in deed and in truth, like John, take a deep interest in “the things of the spirit,” and earnestly desire and diligently endeavor to “know the truth” of all “matters” the Deity has condescended to reveal. They seek to know the true import, the real meaning, of them all; and if they do not succeed, it is a source of much anxiety and restlessness of mind. But saints so called who have a name like many in the ancient Sardis, “that they live, but are dead,” would have seen the scroll at the right of power, and though they should have heard with John, “that no one was able in the heaven, nor upon the earth, nor under the earth, to unrol the scroll, not to see it,” would have been far from joining him in “shedding many tears, because no one was found worthy to unrol and to read the scroll, nor to see it.” Saints of this sort flourish in overwhelming multitudes in the present time. They might possibly so far have respected the presence of the apostle as not to have laughed at his “weakness;” but behind his back, they hesitate not to laugh to scorn those who are interested in this scroll, and seek to understand, or “see it.” They regard such as hairbrained and frantic fanatics, and exclaim in vast astonishment at their presumption. To them the scroll is “covered with a dense and thick veil of ignorance,” which only the presumptuous and reckless would essay to lift or put aside. In holding these sentiments they condemn the weeping of the apostle. What p. 55 sense in his shedding many tears because no one could interpret such a document as they esteem it—a book calculated only to addle or dement the brains of all who try to understand it? Certainly none. In effect, then, they condemn the lamentation of the apostle; and prove to a demonstration, that they are not in fellowship with him; nor, by consequence, “with the Father, and with his son Jesus Christ,”—1 John. i. 3. Hence, the apostle in the vision does not represent saints of their class. In the apocalyptic drama he symbolizes no such impious professors. If a multitude of weepers had been introduced into the scenic representation instead of one tear-shedding apostle, the apocalypse-despising crowd would have found no standing room among them. Such profane and scoffing pietists could have no more place there, than as cherubic eyes in the four Living Ones, when the unrolling of the scroll, and the unloosing of the seals, will be complete. No, not these, but his own class, is symbolized or represented by John in the vision of this fifth chapter. He acts for those in fellowship with the apostles and prophets as these would have acted had they heard the proclamation of the vision in the time before the Lion of Judah’s tribe, was announced as the unroller of the scroll, and looser of the seals. His dramatic weeping argues, and indeed indicates, “the joy unspeakable and full of glory” characteristic of his class, the saints, in their “full assurance of faith and hope” that “all power has been given to him in heaven and upon earth” to unrol the scroll, and to loose the seals thereof; and that consequently, there is no throne, dominion, principality, nor power in the political firmament that can successfully contend against him; nor kindred, tongue, nation, tribe nor people, that can preserve their independence of the sovereignty of Judah and Israel’s King. In the ratio of the lamentation is the intensity of the joy by implication. Sensible men do not “shed many tears” over trifles. Hence, though it is not said that John was glad with exceeding joy when he heard that one was found who was able to unrol the scroll, read and see it, it is nevertheless implied, seeing that he was so movingly affected on the contrary supposition. That scroll, symbolical of its contents, must certainly have been inestimable which could be unrolled only by one in all the Universe deemed of worthiness sufficient by the Lord of heaven and earth. Its denouement, or unravelling of its subject matter, was to put John and all in fellowship with him, in possession of the great salvation—of the kingdom promised to those who are “rich in faith;” hence, to understand this denouement and to know that the Lord Jesus will carry it through, and establish it so that “it cannot be p. 56 moved,” would develope the voices of this fifth chapter which are expressive of loud shouting for joy on the part of all who utter them.

These things being premised, I proceed to remark that the scroll at the right hand of power, occupying symbolically the place of Christ’s present position, is all that section of the Apocalypse embraced in the seven seals. It does not contain the epistles to the seven ecclesias in Asia. In John’s day, the subject matter of these letters were ἃ εισὶ, “the things which are;” but, in our time, they are the things which were; yet is the are and the were connected as the acorn and the wide-spreading oak. The reader will remember the Spirit’s division of the Apocalypse, or “Revelation of Jesus Anointed which the Deity gave to him,” in chap. i. 19. There John was told to write ἃ ειδες, “the things seen;” ἃ εισὶ, “the things extant;” and ἃ μελλει γίνεσθαι, “the things to be.” The Apocalypse, in the largest sense of the word, is the writing John executed in obedience to this command, and comprehends all these three classes of things. The things he had seen at the time of the order to “write,” were the things he saw when, in spirit, or vision, he was in the Lord’s Day, the day when He comes in power and great glory, the account of which is in the first chapter, from the tenth verse to the eighteenth inclusive. The second class of things, or things which are, were those things charged upon the seven ecclesias in the epistles contained in the second and third chapters, and which, instead of being suppressed by the Spirit’s reprobation of them, grew vigorously until they became a great and deadly upas, overshadowing the whole territory of Daniel’s fourth beast dominion, miscalled “Christendom,” as at this day. Hence John’s ἃ εισὶ, or things extant, in the ecclesias named, were the “inside” seeds of things which afterwards became “THE CHURCH BY LAW ESTABLISHED”—an establishment consisting of the nauseous sputa ejected from the Spirit’s mouth when the apostasy had attained its Laodicean development at the incipient loosing of the seventh seal. Its patrons, who by it had their wealth and honor, styled it “THE HOLY APOSTOLIC CATHOLIC CHURCH,” and do symbolize it at this day by a woman clothed with the sun, and the moon under her feet, and angels crowning her with a crown of twelve stars.^a The three ecclesiastical divisions of “Christendom”—Greek, Latin, and Protestant—contend earnestly for what their champions regard as the honor of this title. Each section would appropriate it exclusively p. 57 to itself, but this exclusive appropriation is still in abeyance, and likely so to be interminably; for, as they have not been able to settle the controversy in fifteen centuries and a half, they are not likely so to do in the few years remaining of “the times of the Gentiles,” when the loosing of the seventh seal will be complete.

But there were also written in the seven epistles certain predictions of ἃ μελλει γινεσθαι, “things which shall be,” μετα ταυτα, “after these things”—the iniquities of the second class of things shall be consummated. Jezebel would be clothed with the sun and give birth to the Man-child of Sin; and her children, the Harlots and Abominations of chapter seventeen, would become rich by her, and develope “the depths of the Satan as they teach;” but then, it was predicted in what the Spirit said to the ecclesias, that professors should have “a tribulation ten days;” that He would “fight against them with the sword of his mouth;” that He would cast them into a bed . . . “into great tribulation, and kill them with death;” that He would “come on them as a thief;” that He would “make them come and worship before the feet of those who keep his word, and have not denied his name;” and that professors of the Satan’s synagogue—professors not scripturally in Christ, and those who walk after the flesh—“shall know that he has loved the true believers” whom they despise; that He would bring “the hour of trial upon the whole habitable to try them that dwell upon the earth,” and that, being “lukewarm,” He would “spue them out of his mouth.”

But, beside these threatenings against professors of christianity pretending to be apostles, or “successors of apostles,” “Jews,” and spiritually “rich and increased in goods, and in need of nothing,” as in all the ages and generations of the Apostasy concurrent with the seventh seal, as at this day: but who, both “divines” and people, are apocalyptically denounced as “liars,” holding with the teaching and practices of the Nikolaitanes, which the Spirit hates; as “the Synagogue of the Satan;” “holding the teaching of Balaam” in mass-sacrifices to images, and the fornication of a marriage-forbidding hierarchy; as “the woman Jezebel, who calls herself a prophetess, teaching and seducing God’s servants to practice abomination; as “the Satan;” as “having the name that they live while really dead;” and as “wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked.” Besides the threatenings against these, the apocalyptic epistles abound in promises of a glorious destiny to those who “overcome.” These are described as those “who cannot bear them who are evil,” and who try claimants to apostolicity and inward p. 58 Jewship, and in default of scriptural proof reject them as “liars.” They are described as those who “have borne and had patience, and for the Spirit’s name sake have labored and not fainted;” as rich in faith and faithful unto death; as Antipas, who holds fast the name and has not denied the faith of the Spirit; as those whose “last works are more than the first;” as the “few names” in the midst of a christian community in a dying state, or “ready to die,” who have “not defiled their garments;” as those who have “kept the word and not denied the name of the Spirit;” and as those who are “zealous, and hear the Spirit’s voice; and hearing, respond to his voice, and open the door of their mind and affections to his entering in. These are they who “overcome the wicked one,” and the false prophets of the world, whom the world heareth—1 John iv. 1, 4, 5; ii. 14. They are “born of the Deity,” and therefore “overcome the world” by their faith. They all believe in his promises with an intelligent faith, and that Jesus is his first-begotten—the Chief of his many sons—through whom alone the scroll can be unrolled, and the loosing of its seven seals effected—1 John v. 4, 5.

To these, then, who are the heirs of victory, the epistles to the seven apocalyptic ecclesias teem with promises of abounding glory. The Spirit testifies in them that they shall “eat of the wood of life in the midst of the paradise of Deity;” that a coronal wreath of life shall crown them; that they shall receive a white pebble with a new name engraved upon it, known only to the receiver; that they shall have dominion over the nations, and govern them with an iron sceptre; that the imperial and regal constitution of the world shall break to pieces as the potter’s clay vessels; that those who get the victory over the world shall receive the Morning Star; that they shall be clothed in white garments, and their names openly confessed by the Life-imparting Spirit in the presence of his Father and his angels; that they shall be eternal pillars in the temple of Deity; that the Quickening Spirit (1 Cor. xv. 45; 2 Cor. iii. 17) shall engrave them with the name of his Deity, and the name of the city of his Deity, the New Jerusalem, which descendeth out of the heaven from his Deity, even his new name; and that they shall sit with him in his throne after the example of what shall obtain in relation to himself and his Father’s throne.

Here, then, are threatenings and promises—threatenings for spurious professors and apostates within, and for persecutors of the saints without; and glorious promises for those who gain the victory over their own lusts and the seductions of the world by faith. These were the things to be—the things of the third class, which the p. 59 apocalyptic epistles affirmed but did not unrol. They give no explanation concerning the how and the when the vision symbolical of the Lord’s Day, or “the things seen” of John, in chap. i., and “the things which shall be,” or the threatenings and promises, shall be developed. A revelation, then, was needed to exhibit the when and the how of the threatenings and the promises, and this need was amply supplied by the scroll at the right hand of power, written within and on the outside, and sealed up with seven seals. It was placed in the vision at the right hand of power, or, as it is expressed in the text, “at the right of Him seated upon the throne,” to signify that none but the Omnipotent in manifestation was “able” or powerful enough to unrol it and loose its seals. Gabriel, whose name, גבריאל, signifies Mighty One of Power, “who stands in the presence of Deity,” had been employed to give Daniel skill and understanding in the vision and matter communicated to him in the third year of Belshatzar (Dan. viii. 16; ix. 21; Luke i. 19); but Gabriel was not worthy, able, or powerful enough to give John skill and understanding in the matter of the scroll; for, says John, “no one was able in the heaven, nor upon the earth, nor under the earth, to unrol the scroll, nor to see it.”

The book of Daniel is to the Apocalypse as the acorn to the oak. The latter is the mystery of Daniel’s prophecy symbolically revealed. This ministry of the things he ministered he thought much upon, and sought to find out with great diligence, but without success; for he was informed that the mystery was hidden, and could not be penetrated until a time appointed.

As already intimated, Daniel saw a scroll, as indicated in the phrase “the words and seal the book,” as well as John. He was told that “the words were closed up and sealed till the time of the end.” Hence, these were to Daniel “a scroll at the right of Him seated upon the throne written within and on the outside, sealed up with seven seals.” That closed and sealed against Daniel’s understanding was the mystery or secret of the words of the book.

But one might inquire, If the mystery were to be concealed “till the time of the end,” in what sense can John’s apocalyptic scroll and seals be a revelation of the hidden wisdom of Daniel’s book, seeing that John’s age was not “the time of the end”—a time which is only just now dawning upon the world? This we consider a very pertinent inquiry. In answer, the reader may be reminded, that the revelation to John was symbolical. He did not see the actual, but only the acted or dramatized events he describes. What he saw was a pictorial representation, as it were— p. 60 a speaking hieroglyphic signifying to his understanding things which in the time of the end shall all have become accomplished facts; so that, in this end “the vision shall speak, and not lie”—Hab. ii. 3. The Apocalypse in its word-painting is the unrolling to the understanding of the servants of the Deity the series of events that should be successively unfolded, and which in their time of the end consummation should manifest as an accomplished result “THE END OF THE MATTER”—Dan. vii. 28.

The scroll had to be unrolled and its seals loosed before the vision it contained could be read and perceived, or intelligibly comprehended, when it should “speak at the end.” The speaking at the end truthfully, is what is styled in modern phrase the denouement, a word signifying the discovery of the plot, the unravelling or issue of the matter, termed in Daniel “the end of the matter.” This denouement was revealed to him; but the unfolding of the particular series and succession of events thereunto leading, was not made known to him. He was informed in general terms, that the powers of the fourth beast dominion should make war upon and prevail against the saints until the Ancieut of Days should come; and that then the saints should become a power mighty enough to destroy the fourth-beast system of powers; and to set up the kingdom of Deity. In the establishment of which as the great political fact of the age and generation, the denouement of God’s dealings with the nations all the time of their ascendancy over the saints, would be manifested. He was instructed that “the end of the matter” was to be a crisis elaborated providentially from antecedents evolved in the history of the fourth-beast nationalities; but what was the particular vein to be worked out in its several lodes to conduct to the main and terminable results, he did not “see.” In dramatical representation, the spectators behold the unrolling of the author’s scroll, as the acting is in progress; but they have to wait till the end of the piece, the time of the end, for the dramatist’s conception to “speak and not lie.” Unless they have read the play, or seen it acted before, they have to “wait for the end of the matter,” ere they can tell how the matter will come out, or what the ingenious dramatist designed should be the end of the whole, or the issue of the plot. It was thus with Daniel and John. The end of the matter had been revealed to them both. They had read the denouement of the drama to result at the end from all its shifting scenes; but they had never seen nor read the play. The acting had not been revealed to them. In Daniel’s time the stage had not been prepared, nor the dramatis personæ, the company of performers, p. 61 collected and arranged in their several parts for the performance of the tragedy to be played. There was no fourth-beast dominion then; nor any saints who had “washed their robes, and made them white in the blood of the Lamb”—Rev. vii. 14—to be prevailed against thereby; and without these important parties in the premises, the actual tragedy could not begin; nor could a representation or rehearsal of the performance have come with any enlightening effect upon Daniel’s mind, being ignorant as he was, of the mystery afterwards revealed in the apostolic ministration of “the word.”

But by the time that John had come to be an exile in Patmos, all this was changed. Daniel’s situation was no longer that of John and his brethren. The fourth-beast dominion was now upon the world’s stage; and, as the Little Horn, not then as yet decorated with “Eyes like the eyes of a man, and a mouth speaking great things,” had “taken away the Daily, and had cast down the place of its sanctuary,” and practised and prospered. Messiah the prince, though faultless, had been “cut off” by this horn; and by the teaching concerning his kingdom and name, a people composed of Israelites and Gentiles according to the flesh, had been developed as the seed of the great father of the faithful and “friend of God,” by adoption through Jesus as the prince; and stood confessed of heaven before “the inhabiters of the earth and sea”—the whole habitable—as “THE ISRAEL OF GOD.”

In these two hostile communities exist all the elements to be afterwards developed into the parties of the play. The Israel of God on the one side, and the Fourth Beast, on the other, contained the germs of the conflicting good and evil of the ages and generations from John’s day to the giving of “the kingdom, and dominion, and the greatness of the kingdom, under all of the heavens to the people of the saints of the Most High Ones, whose kingdom is the kingdom of Olahm (the hidden period), and all dominions shall serve and obey him;” which is “the end of the matter.” While the apocalyptical tragedy was being rehearsed before John, in Patmos, God’s Israel was already constituted of “two manner of people”—they who walked after the flesh; and they who walked after the spirit, which is the truth. Out of the former were afterwards developed the worshippers of demons and of “idols of gold, and silver, and brass, and stone, and of wood”—Rev. ix. 20: also, “the Mouth speaking great things and blasphemies—xiii. 5; the image of the beast; the drunken woman, and all the daughters of her prostitution, and abominations of the earth”—Rev. xvii. 1-5. These all are the fruit of the Mystery of Iniquity that was at p. 62 work in the mystical body of Christ, in the time of Paul and John. The apostolical epistles are full of protest against its insidious and corrupt working, which they clearly saw would “eat as doth a gangrene;” and therefore earnestly warned all who would be approved of God to have nothing to do with those who favored it—2 Tim. ii. 15-18; 2 John 10.

On the other hand, from the Israel of God who walked in the truth were developed in after ages and generations, “the souls under the altar slain for the word of God”—ch. vi. 9; “the servants of the Deity sealed in their foreheads;” the 144,000, or “holy nation,” (1 Pet. ii. 9); the white-robed palm bearers—ch. vii; the temple of the Deity, the altar worshippers, and the holy city—ch. xi. 1-2; the four and twenty elders, and the four living ones; the fugitive woman and the remnant of her seed—ch. xii. 14, 17; God’s name and tabernacle, and them that dwell in the heaven—the saints—ch. xiii. 6, 7; the redeemed from the earth, the virgins, the first-fruits unto the Deity and the Lamb, faultless before the throne—ch. xiv. 1-5; them who had gotten the victory over the beast, and over his image, and over the number of his name, having the harps of Deity—ch. xv. 2; the kings of the east, who watch and keep their garments—ch. xvi. 12, 15; the called, and chosen and faithful with the Lamb in his wars—ch. xvii. 14; the prophets and saints slain—ch. xviii. 24; the Lamb’s wife arrayed in righteousness; and the squadrons of his power—ch. xix. 7, 8, 14; them to whom judgment is given, the beheaded souls, who worshipped not the beast, nor his image, and who reign with Christ as the priests of Deity for a thousand years; the beloved city—ch. xx. 4, 6, 9; the holy city, New Jerusalem, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband, the municipal aggregate of all written in the Lamb’s book of life—ch. xxi. 2, 27; whose foreheads are enstamped with the name of Deity and the Lamb—ch. xxii. 4. These all constitute “the Israel of the Deity” upon whom Paul invoked “peace and mercy”—Gal. vi. 16; and for whose special information the apocalypse was rehearsed to John in Patmos; and who were, and are yet to enact a most conspicuous part in its public exhibition upon the platform of the habitable dominated temporarily by the fourth-beast system of powers, so dreadful and terrible to Daniel’s sight—Dan. vii. 7.

As already remarked above, the Israel of God and this Fourth Beast Dominion contained of old all the germs of the good and evil which have mingled in devouring conflict for the past eighteen hundred years; and which will continue occurrent till the victory which shall culminate in the blessing of all nations in Abraham and his seed. We have traced the germinal development p. 63 of “the two manner of people” through the tragedy rehearsed to John. By examining the testimonies cited above, the reader will see how they diverged into an “enmity” that admits of no mitigation or compromise; but which apocalyptically results in the utter and final extermination of the Laodicean Apostasy from among the nations of the Fourth Beast where alone it has taken root. The reader will also see from the same testimonies that the apostasy generated in and evolved from the mystical body of Christ, or God’s Israel, is found in alliance with the “dreadful, terrible, and exceedingly strong” dominion of “the whole habitable,” against “the remnant who keep the commandments of the Deity and have the testimony of Jesus Anointed;” and that the fate of the one is that also of the other—the civil, military, and ecclesiastical constitution and institutions of “Christendom,” which is the fourth-beast organization come to remediless perdition, as the result of the “judgment given to the saints.”

In John’s day, then, this Fourth Beast was in the germinal phase of its development, Daniel saw it with many horns upon it; but neither he nor John were contemporary with them. The beast had arisen out of the Great Sea countries, and John was living under the dominion of its Sixth Head—ch. xvii. 10; that is, under the rule of Rome Imperial. The beast had not then acquired horns; and it had not then become acquainted with that “god whom his fathers knew not . . that strange god” who was afterwards to be “acknowledged” by the Emperors, and by them “increased with glory”—Dan. xi. 38, 39. This “god” had not appeared on the Roman Habitable then. John had no personal acquaintance with him; but in the apocalyptic rehearsal of what was in after ages to be publicly exhibited before the concourse of nations, he saw that he would appear and figure upon the blood-stained arena as the Image of the Beast—an image resulting from a coalition of the Laodicean Apostasy with the Roman State.

In the apocalyptic rehearsal, then, John saw this pagan dominion under which he lived developed into the Man of Sin-Power. He beheld its birth coeval with a great war in the heaven of the Fourth Beast—ch. xii. 5, 7. He saw the development of the Ten Horns as the result of the Fourth Beast Dragon being compelled to yield a portion of his power, his throne, and great authority to certain incomers upon the habitable, who divided with the imperials the sovereignty of the earth—ch. xiii. 1-4. He saw these new powers of the earth in alliance with a blasphemous power, under whose inspiration they would make war upon the saints, and overcome them. He saw, also, this persecuting power acquire great consistence, p. 64 and become imperial. Daniel’s “Little Horn with Eyes and Mouth” rose up before him in the form of a beast coming out of the earth, having two horns as of a lamb, and speaking as a dragon. He saw the horn and mouth in this beast, and “the Eyes” in the image which the civil and military power would cause the people to worship upon pain of death—ch. xiii. He saw in this the Man of Sin-Power, begotten and born in previous centuries, developing into a “dreadful and terrible” tyranny, that would make the times perilous for the saints, and for all, who, from any cause, would not do it homage. He perceived, also, that it would have the ascendancy for a long time; and that it would do after its will for forty-two months of years. This long period he knew would reach: to the coming of the Ancient of Days; and that the Fourth Beast dominion would then be in its full and final manifestation. The Man of Sin-Power would then be in full fruition, and in its final form. It was rehearsed to Daniel in this form with other three dominions; and was afterwards apocalyptically rehearsed to John as a scarlet colored beast with eight heads, bearing as its rider a drunken prostitute. He saw in this the Man of Sin Power in full maturity; and ready to contend with the Ancient of Days and his followers, “the called, chosen, and faithful,” for the indefinite perpetuation of the Fourth Beast dominion “over all kindreds, and tongues, and nations”—ch. xvii. and xiii. 7. But “the end of the matter” divinely purposed required the victory of the Woman’s Seed; and that the saints should possess “the kingdom and dominion, and the greatness of the kingdom under all of the heavens.” This being the predetermination of the Deity, when the apocalyptic rehearsal had brought out the Sin-Power to the full, its judgment was forthwith represented to John as immediately consequent upon the manifestation of a great heaven-descended angel power upon earth. He saw that the judgment of the saints would fall with primary and especial violence upon the ecclesiastical element of the Fourth Beast—ch. xviii. Babylon the Great being thus abolished, he saw the civil power that had upheld her, and had caused all nations to bow their necks to her priestly yoke, subjected to relentless and exterminating war; the result of which was the total abolition of the Church and State of the Fourth Beast dominion. Consequent upon this, the Beast of the Sea, the Beast of the Earth, the Image of the Beast, and the False Prophet, the head thereof, are no longer found playing any part in the public affairs of the world. The all-conquering saints and the Dragon alone remain. John saw the Dragon chained in the bottomless profound.

p. 65 There was no binding of the others. They were destroyed; but not so the Dragon. This is shut up and imprisoned for a thousand years, and afterwards released preparatory to his destruction then. Identical with this was the consummation represented to Daniel in ch. vii. 11, 12. There the Fourth Beast body politic is totally destroyed, while the lion, bear, and leopard nationalities are deprived of sovereignty by the saints, or bound for a season and a time, during which long period there is no power on earth to dispute its absolute possession by the SON OF MAN—Jesus and His brethren. More than this was not deponed to Daniel. He was informed, indeed, that the saints should possess the kingdom עד־עלמא ועד עלם עלמיא ad-ahlmah, wead ahlam ahlmaiyah—“during the hidden period, even for a hidden period of the hidden periods:” but what was to transpire in regard to the suppressed dominion of the lion, bear, and leopard, after the expiration of the “period of the periods,” he did not see. It was reserved for the apocalyptic rehearsal to inform the servants of the Deity, that the lion, bear, and leopard dominion, should be “loosed a little season” after the expiry of the season and time period of their subjection to the saints; and should then renew their conflict with them, and so bring upon themselves swift and irremediable, and final destruction. “The end of the matter” with Daniel was the victorious establishment of the Millennial Kingdom of the Saints. Beyond this his vision did not penetrate. He knew nothing of the Son’s delivering up the kingdom to the Father as the result of a crisis culminating in the change of its constitution, the abolition of mediatorship, and the supercession of flesh and blood nature by spirit; so that all the dwellers upon earth shall be ὁ Θεος τα παντα ἐν πᾶσιν, the Deity the all things in all—DEITY MANIFESTED IN FLESH—of which the glorified and anointed Jesus is now the type. This is the end of the matter rehearsed before John—the apocalyptic denouement of the divine purpose conceived by the Allwise Intelligence before the foundation of the world.

2. The Writing Within and on the Outside

The scroll, then, is representative of the things rehearsed before John——the things which were to be transacted by the performers indicated in our previous sectional remarks in the public audience of the world, until the establishment of the kingdom promised to the poor, who may be found rich in faith, and deemed worthy to p. 66 possess it. It was “written within and on the outside.” This was not stated without meaning. We have seen that it has reference to two general classes of actors in the drama; to those within the temple, and to those of the court without—ch. xi. 2. “We were troubled on every side,” saith Paul; “without were fightings, within were fears”—2 Cor. vii. 5. The outsiders are those who make war upon and persecute the saints, such as the beasts, the image of the beast, dragon, and so forth. The things of the scroll written concerning these, were the things written on the outside; while those written on the inside, are the things written about the remnant of the woman’s seed, the 144,000, the white robed palm bearers, the witnesses, the victorious harpists of the Deity, the Lamb’s wife, his followers in the war of the great day of Almighty Power, and so forth. So long as the scroll was rolled up, and the seals not loosed, what was written without and within would be unreadable, and unseen. Hence the unrolling of the scroll, and the loosing the seals, were indispensable to a practical knowledge of its contents. Suffice it then to say in the absence of a present acquaintance with their details, that whatever the writing within may be, it could only be lamentation and woe on the outside; inasmuch as those who are “without are dogs, and sorcerers, and whoremongers, and murderers, and idolators, and whosoever loveth and invents a lie”—ch. xxii. 15. Such “in nowise enter into,” or within “the city;” for no one that defiles is permitted to come in there. As it is written, “there shall in no wise enter into it any thing that defileth, neither whatsoever worketh abomination, or inventeth a lie: save they who have been written in the Lamb’s roll of life”—ch. xxi. 27. These only will be found therein; and to them only do the good things written within the scroll belong.

The things written on the outside pertain to the “dogs,” against whom Paul cautioned those within, saying, “Beware of dogs, beware of evil workers, beware of the concision”—Phil. iii. 2. These were dogs who had got into the sheepfold unawares, and passed themselves off for sheep by a sheeplike demeanor. They were nothing but dogs, however, in the clothing of sheep. They were very pious; so much so, that in appearance they surpassed the sheep. They were righteous overmuch, and thereby destroyed themselves—Eccl. vii. 16. They were “evil workers” under pious pretences, who seduced the faithful from “the simplicity which is in Christ,” teaching for doctrine the traditions which in after years intoxicated all the nations of the Fourth Beast dominion.

These “dogs” without are commonly styled “the Fathers” by p. 67 those who are without. These, in the estimation of the Gentiles of “the court which is without the temple,” are of higher authority in all ecclesiastical or spiritual questions and “articles of faith” than all the prophets and apostles, or Jesus Christ himself. The Fathers of the Greek and Latin “Christendom” are the foundation upon which it is built for a habitation of the Satan, through the spirit that works in the children of disobedience. The spirituals of “the court of the Gentiles without the temple,” in all “the times” allotted to the Gentiles to “tread under foot the Holy City,” are the living incarnations, in all the ages and generations of those times, of the soul-destroying principles and practices of “the concision”—loved and invented by the Nikolaitanes, Balaamites, children of Jezebel, and the Satan—the Fathers of the Laodicean Apostasy. The priestly and ministerial incarnations of the principles of these Fathers in our day are “LEGION.” They are the blind leaders of the blind into the perdition that is yawning to engulph the Man of Sin-power and all his agents. Their admirers designate them as “reverend divines,” “ambassadors of Jesus Christ,” “successors of the apostles,” “ministers of the gospel,” called and sent of God, as Aaron was, to preach and administer ordinances, “holy men of God,” clergy, or God’s lot, “holy orders,” and so forth. They are the spiritual guides of the people in all the ways, the broad ways, of “the court without the temple of God.” They are the learned and pious expositors of the traditions sanctioned by the innumerable “names and denominations,” styled apocalyptically “names of blasphemy,” of which the scarlet-colored beast of the “court without” is declared to be “full”—ch. xvii. 3. These “dogs without” are they who “are of the world, who therefore speak of the world; and whom the world consequently hears.” By this broad fact, patent to all who understand the truth, all apocalyptic “dogs” may be discerned, and the spirit by which they are inspired perceived—1 John iv. 1-6. They are, as the prophet said of the watchmen of Israel, “blind; they are all ignorant (of the truth); they are all dumb dogs, they cannot bark; dreamy, lying down, loving to slumber. Yea, greedy dogs which can never have enough, and they are shepherds that cannot understand; they all look to their own way (or sect), every one for his gain to his quarter”—Isa. lvi. 10, 11. “They are shepherds that cannot understand,” or “come to the knowledge of the truth”—2 Tim. iii. 7. They can understand, in some sort, the school divinity it is their business to grind for those who go “wondering after” them, and by whom they have their wealth; but to understand the gospel of the kingdom of the Deity, and of the name of Jesus Christ, is too high for them, they cannot attain to it. Let any man, intelligent p. 68 in the gospel, the preaching concerning Jesus, the revelation of the mystery and its fellowship, as set forth by the apostles (Rom. xvi. 25, 26; Eph. iii. 9), take in hand a Greek priest, a Papist sin-pardoner, a Protestant State Church parson, or a Dissenting minister of any of the sects of “the court without the temple,” and try his best to exorcise him of his Gentileism, and to substitute in his understanding “the truth as it is in Jesus,” and he will find experimentally, that they are all shepherds that cannot understand. With much care the truth was communicated to their predecessors of the apostolic age, who received it, but not in the love of it that they might be saved. They held it in unrighteousness, having the form of godliness, but denying its power. For this cause, God, as Paul threatened, sent upon them strong delusion that they should believe the lie they had invented and to this day so dearly love—2 Thess. ii. 10-12. This “lie” is the matter of the φαρμακεια, or poisoning by which all nations have been deceived—ch. xviii. 23. Its effect is to delude strongly all that swallow it, so that it is hardly possible for the truth to enter in.

Apocalyptically, “the dogs without” who administer this poison to the people are styled in the com. version “sorcerers,” i. e. φαρμακοι, poisoners. They poison the people with their soul-medicines; and so having bewitched them, make merchandise of them from the cradle to the grave. It is evident from Acts xiii. 6, that a sorcerer is a false prophet or teacher. All, therefore who do not teach the truth are scripturally designated “sorcerers,” poisoners, or false prophets, and are classed with the “filthy” and the “unjust,” and are obnoxious to all the judgments written upon the scroll on the outside. It was for them, “those men who have not the seal of God upon their foreheads,” that the scorpion-torment and the woe that followed were prepared. These judgments overwhelmed them with calamity, and reduced them to the basest servitude under which they groan until this day. Nevertheless, the rest of their class, upon which the ruin did not come, “repented not of their murders, nor of their sorceries, nor of their fornication, nor of their thefts” Rev. ix. From the Chief Sorcerer in Rome to the meanest poisoner among the western nations, this unrepentant state of mind is their characteristic. They still cling tenaciously to their superstitions, and are as murderously disposed towards all that oppose them as of old. On the side of the oppressor is power; and, wherever that power is, there are the priests, clergy, and ministers of the apostasy to be found sanctifying tyranny, and dividing with the plunderer the gains of extortion and the profits accruing from popular ignorance and folly. Because as murderers, they have shed the blood of p. 69 saints and prophets; blood has been given them to drink; they have been scorched with fire and have been made to gnaw their tongues with pain—Rev. xvi. 6, 8, 10. Yet “they repented not of their deeds.” The judgments that have been poured out upon them, and which have ensanguined the page of history to this present, have failed to bring them to repentance. The things written on the outside of the scroll speak only of the fullness of wrath for such. As they will not repent, utter destruction is written against them in their being made to “drink of the wine of the wrath of Deity, which is poured out without mixture into the cup of his indignation,” and in being “tormented with fire and brimstone in the presence of the holy angels, and in the presence of the Lamb”—Rev. xiv. 10. When this consummation shall have been developed, the saints’ war, which pertains to the great and dreadful day of Yahweh (Rev. xvi. 14; Joel ii. 31) will have expended itself in the conquest of the Ten Horns, or “kingdoms of the world” (ch. xi. 15; xvii. 14), the utter and fiery consumption of the ecclesiastical system of the Greco-Latin habitable (c. xviii. 4-8), the extinction of the beast and false prophet power in the lake of fire, and the binding of the Dragon in the bottomless abyss. These results belong to the things written on the outside of the scroll, and were a rehearsal before John of the finishing of the mystery of the Deity as he had already declared the glad tidings to his servants the prophets—ch. x. 7. All orders in the states and “churches” of the world, symbolized by the fourth beast of Daniel, will then have been judicially abolished, and the spiritual and temporal destroyers of the people will have been themselves retributively destroyed—ch. xi. 18. There will then be no more any priests, parsons, or preachers, ministering to the ignorance and superstition and sensuality of the multitude and their own especial gain and glorification. The influence of these “sorcerers” over the public conscience will have been reduced to zero, The blasphemous names and denominations which fill the eight-headed scarlet-colored beast will have been dissipated, and mankind will have at length attained to that unity of faith and practice so amply foretold in the writings of the holy prophets. Then, when the clergy and ministers of the Laodicean Apostasy shall have been thrust out of the way (for they, as upheld by the civil power and ignorance of their devotees, are the Babylonian hindrance to the Millennium), the denouement of the things written on the outside of the scroll will stand out in bold relief before all nations, which will then have learned obedience to God and his saints by the things they shall have suffered; and they will say—

p. 70 “To Him that sitteth on the throne,\ And to the Lamb the blessing be,\ The honor, glory, and the pow’r,\ The Aions of the Aions for!”—Apoc. v. 13.

And then, in the language of Apoc. v. 14, the victorious “kings of the east,” standing upon the sea of glass no longer mingled with fire (ch. xv. 2), shall joyously approbate the benediction, and proclaim the loud and mighty apocalyptic AMEN! So let it be for the thousand years, “until he has put all enemies under his feet”—1 Cor. xv. 25. Then will the “royal priesthood” of the heavens, being at that time in those heavenlies (1 Pet. ii. 9; Matt. v. 12), rejoice with the subject nations, upon whom the blessing of Abraham will have come, with loud acclamation, saying, “We give thee thanks, O Yahweh Ail-Shaddai, the Being, and the Was, and the Being Come, because thou takest to thee thy great power, and reignest”—ch. xi. 17. “Great and marvellous are thy works, Yahweh Ail-Shaddai; just and true thy ways, thou King of Saints. Who shall not fear thee, O Yahweh, and glorify thy name? for thou only art holy: for all nations shall come and do homage before thee: for thy judgments are made manifest”—ch. xv. 3, 4. “Hallelu-Yah, salvation, and glory, and honor, and power unto Yahweh our Elohim; for true and righteous are his judgments: for he hath judged the Great Harlot, which corrupted the earth with her prostitution, and hath avenged the blood of his servants at her hand. Hallelu Yah! Amen! Hallelu-Yah! Praise our God, all ye his servants, and ye that fear him, both small and great. Hallelu-Yah! for Yahweh Elohim omnipotent reigns. Let us be glad and rejoice, and give honor to him; for the marriage of the Lamb is come, and his wife hath made herself ready”—ch. xix. 1-7.

Such was the end of the matter written within the scroll, and rehearsed before John as inaugurative of the reign of the Great and Holy City, New Jerusalem, over the healed nations for a thousand years—ch. xx. 1-6; xxi. 2, 10, 24; xxii. 2—in all which the world is possessed by the city, the saint-city, the Royal and Priestly Municipality of Deity; and all nations are blessed with faithful Abraham and his seed—1 Cor. iii. 21, 22; Gal. iii. 9.