p. 263Vol. I. pp. 428, 449.
The “Little Strength” of the Philadelphian State exhausted, and Laodiceanism fully established. Persecution having ceased, and “the Catholics,” as nominal christians were now called, being in high favor with the authorities, they say, “We are rich, and increased in goods, and have need of nothing”—Apoc. iii. 17. Being “lukewarm,” the Spirit “spues them out of his mouth.”
Act VI.—Seal-Period Sixth
Apoc. vi. 12-17.
A great earthquake inaugurates this judicial period. War in the heaven, resulting in an eclipse of the sun, in the moon becoming blood, in stars of the heaven—the stars drawn by the Tail of the Dragon—falling to the earth, and in the casting out thereinto of the Great Red Dragon. The heaven of the Dragon-polity departs as a scroll rolled up; and every mountain and island change their places. The Angels of the Dragon are cast out with him. No place found for them any more in the heaven from which they are ejected, having been effectually conquered by the Archer of the First Seal in his Fifth Seal manifestation—conquering him by the blood of the Lamb, and by the word of their testimony, on account of which the fellowservants and brethren were slain, not loving their lives unto death. Great rejoicings in the heavens by them who succeed the ejected Dragon and his officials, who rage with great fury in the earth and sea of their late dominion. The great day of wrath upon Paganism.
The woman Jezebel, who calls herself a prophetess, the Laodicean Apostasy, imperialized, and the man of Sin Power revealed.
A. D. 311.
12. “And I saw when he opened the Sixth Seal; and behold a great earthquake occurred, and the Sun became black as sackcloth of hair, and the Moon became as blood. 13. And the Stars of the Heaven fell into the earth as a figtree casts its unripe figs, being shaken by a mighty wind. 14. And the heaven departed as a scroll rolled up; and every mountain and island were moved out of their places, 15. And the kings of the earth, and the great men, and the rich, and the military chieftains, and the mighty ones, and every bondman and every freeman, concealed themselves in the caverns and among the rocks of the mountains: 16. And they say to the mountains and to the rocks, ‘Fall on us, and hide us from the face of him who sits upon the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb: for that great day of his wrath has come, and who could have been caused to stand.’”
p. 2641.—Preliminary Remarks
The Lion of the Tribe of Judah and Root of David, who prevailed to unroll the apocalyptic scroll, and to loose the previous seals opened this, the Sixth also. He had executed judgment on his own “Holy Nation” (1 Pet. ii. 9) for its iniquities; and in this, he was about to bring to an end the power of the idolators; of “the world rulers of the darkness of the Aion;” of “the spirituals of the wickedness in the HEAVENLIES” who had oppressed them—Eph. vi. 12: and if “judgment begin at the House of the Deity, what shall the end be of them that obey not the gospel of the Deity? And if the righteous scarcely be saved, where shall the ungodly and the sinner appear?”—1 Pet. iv. 17. The sixth seal will answer these questions as it regards the disobedient ungodly and sinners of the pagan Roman Habitable, who had warred against the Lamb till A. D. 311.
The remarkable symbolization of this seal represents a universe convulsed by earthquake, blood shedding, and tempest, indicative of the wrath of the Deity in a great day of wrath, upon the panic-stricken enemies of the Lamb. It does not represent the Universe; because symbols do not represent themselves: on the supposition that they do, we should be making them both sign and thing signified, which would be absurd. The nature of symbolic writing requires that the signs and the things signified be analogous, but different. But the Apocalypse is not a revelation of natural appearances, or extraordinary phenomena, in earth, sea, and sky; but a sign-representation of things extant in John’s day; and of things which should be after his time, in relation to the Holy Nation of the Deity planted in the territory of Daniel’s Fourth Beast, until the coming of the Ancient of Days. The apocalyptic symbolization is illustrative to them who can “see” of the conflict of the saints with pagan Rome until they “conquered” it; with Catholic, and afterwards, with Papal, Rome, until it conquered them; and hereafter, with all “the powers that be,” until they in turn conquer and abolish them for a thousand years. This being the nature of the Apocalypse, we must not look to the natural, but to the POLITICAL UNIVERSE for the interpretation of its signs.
And here we find it necessary to remark in this so-called enlightened century, that “the signs of the times” vouchsafed by the Deity for the use of his genuine servants in their several generations, p. 265 are not in the sky. He has not placed them there. No intelligent believer of the gospel looks overhead for a darkening of the solar system, and the falling of stars, as a sign of the great day of the Lamb’s wrath being near. The alleged darkening in New England, A. D. 1780, and falling of stars, A. D. 1833, were phenomena that none but Laodicean Heathen would regard as signs of the times. The Deity’s revealed signs are not manifested in America. We may feel the working of them; but they are not in these heavens, natural nor political. A wicked and adulterous generation seeks signs in the sky like the signs of the weather with which they are familiar; but no sign shall be given it. Let the reader, then, not “learn the way of the Heathen; and be not dismayed at the signs of the heaven; for the Heathen are dismayed at them: for the customs of the people are vain”—Jer. x. 2. Neither John nor Peter represented or taught the dissolving of the physical universe, and the “burning up of the earth.” “The earth is Yahweh’s,” for he made it; it is temporarily “given into the hand of the wicked,” till the King shall come to possess it with his Saints to the uttermost parts thereof. “He hath established it for ever.” No interpretation of scripture that would falsify these statements can be true. All theories of the kind must therefore be rejected as mere idle tales in which only the children of the Apostasy can take delight.
No, the Deity’s signs are in the political universe. This, in a sense analogous to the material, hath its earth, sea, and firmament, or aërial expanse; in which are set its greater and lesser lights, and constellations—its Sun, Moon, and Stars. It hath its hurricanes, shakings, eclipses, hailstorms, and so forth, which affect injuriously those who belong to the Body Politic, whether they be rulers or the common people.
The territory of Daniel’s Fourth Beast, styled by John, “the Great Red Dragon,” was the arena of a political system “diverse from all the beasts that were before it.” The whole extent of this wide domain was decreed to be “the Great Roman City. The dominion of this power centred in Rome, covered the whole territory as a sheet of parchment covers a surface equal to itself. This parchment lifted up over that surface, would symbolize the aerial expanse, firmament, or constitution of the State, or κοσμος; and would divide “the waters,” or “peoples” of the system, from the waters; the waters under the aërial, would be “the earth,” “sea,” “rivers and fountains,” “mountains and islands;” and the waters above, the ruling classes, “thrones, dominions, principalities, and p. 266 powers,” or sun, moon, stars, and constellations. Such was the Roman Universe in its apocalyptic symbolization. In the creation, “Elohim called the firmament Heaven;” and so in the political system, the Spirit styles the aërial, “heaven;” and all who live under the dominion are said to be, “under the whole heaven.”
There have been several political universes in the past; as, the Babylonian, Idumæan, Egyptian, Israelitish, and so forth. When the Eternal Spirit decreed their overthrow, the epoch of judgment upon each, was styled “the Day of Yahweh.” There have been as many such days as there have been powers destroyed. There was a day of Yahweh on Babylon predicted in as highly metaphorical a style as the Day of the Lamb’s wrath in this Seal. In Isa. xiii. the conquest by the Medes and Persians is styled, “the Day of Yahweh coming as a destruction from Shaddai, . . to lay the land (of Chaldea) desolate; for the stars of heaven and the constellations thereof shall not give their light; the sun shall be darkened in his going forth; and the moon shall not cause her light to shine.” Then follows in the next verse the interpretation, to wit, “and I will punish the world (of Babylon) for their evil, and the wicked for their iniquity; and I will cause the arrogancy of the proud to cease, and will lay low the haughtiness of the terrible.” And to show how intense the judgment was intended by the metaphors, it is added, “I will make a man more precious than fine gold. . . . Therefore I will shake the heavens, and the earth shall remove out of her place, in the wrath of Yahweh Tz’vaoth, and in the day of his fierce anger.” All of which was accomplished by Cyrus, as Yahweh’s Anointed commander and leader of his sanctified ones the Medes and Persians.
The prediction in Isa. xxxiv. of a similar day on Idumæa is expressed in the same grand and magnificent style: “The indignation of Yahweh is upon all nations, and his fury upon all their armies: he utterly destroys them, he delivers them to the slaughter. Their slain also shall be cast out, and their stench shall come up out of their carcases, and the mountains shall be melted with their blood.” Then follows the same prediction exhibited in hieroglyphics strikingly similar to the Sixth Seal, to wit: “And all the host of heaven shall be dissolved, and the heaven shall be rolled together as a scroll; and all their host shall fall down, as the leaf falleth off from the vine, and as a falling fig from the figtree. For my sword shall be bathed in heaven.” Then the less figurative style is resumed, and is made expletive of the metaphorical, saying, “Behold it (the sword) shall come down upon Idumæa, and upon the people of my p. 267 curse to judgment. The sword of Yahweh is filled with blood, it is made fat with fatness, with the blood of lambs and goats, with the fat of the kidneys of rams; for Yahweh hath a sacrifice in Botzrah, and a great slaughter in the land of Idumæa.”
Christ Jesus and Peter adopted the same metaphorical style in predicting the Day of the Lord upon the Commonwealth of Judah. The former blended the literal and the figurative after the manner in Isaiah; but the one, so easily distinguishable from the other, that no confusion need result in the comprehension of the discourse.
Now, the Deity in the Sixth Seal decreed the fate of the Roman Universe, as constituted under Jupiter, in a style identical with the formula he pronounced against Babylon under Bel, and Idumæa under Chemosh. He declared that “the Heaven” should “depart as a scroll rolled up.” Illustrative of this, the reader may imagine our symbolical parchment rolling up like a scroll. As it curled up, the surface beneath would be proportionately uncovered, until the rolling up should be completed, when the whole subjacent superficies would be exposed. The heathen firmament, or aërial expanse, of the Roman Universe having thus “departed,” room would be provided for a New Heaven to expand itself over the same geographical limits of earth and sea. Thus, one heaven would be exchanged for another, in which the sun, moon, and stars would shine forth again with a light in harmony with the new parchment, or aërial constitution of the Body Politic.
But, the firmaments, or heavens, of orbs political, do not pass away, or suffer radical change, without violence. Babylon, Persia, Greece, and Rome, are all evidential of the truth of this. The violence may proceed directly from the oppressed peoples, or the earth and sea; or from a conflict generated in the rivalries of the powers in the heaven; or from both causes in coöperation. When the convulsion begins under the heaven, it ascends, if successful, as clouds of smoke darkening the sun and air—ch. ix. 1, 2; or, the earth may be shaken, which, when the shaking is great, more or less agitates the aërial. But, sometimes the electricity from the earth accumulating in the firmament, the heavenly region itself becomes inflamed, and the elements thereof commingle in the thunders and lightnings of war. It may, then, be said, “there was war in heaven”—ch. xii. 7. But when the heaven is concussed with elemental war, no dew or gentle rain descends upon “the earth” or peoples. These, in the political universe, are influences which cause the peoples to flourish and rejoice. The electrical condition p. 268 of “the earth,” or people, may shut up the heaven against the descent of dew and rain, which must of necessity parch up all beneath it—ch. xi. 6. The heaven, however, intensely excited, becomes exceedingly dangerous to all beneath it. It may pour down a great storm of hail upon men, every stone being of a talent weight—ch. xvi. 21; or as in the sixth seal, it may overspread its sun with blackness the most intense, redden its moon with blood, and with its electric hurricane, project its stars into the earth.
When “the heaven departed as a scroll rolled up,” another heaven took its place. This was “the Holy Catholic” Heaven, with sun, moon, and stars, to suit. The commencement of this heaven was characterized by “silence in it about the space of half an hour”—ch. viii. 1. Jupiter’s heaven was subdivided by four; while the Catholic came transiently to be distributed into thirds. Upon this heavenly organization came the judgments of the Trumpets and the Vials. The threefold division obtains at the end as well as in its earlier times; for under the Seventh Vial, which is concurrent with the resurrection-period, “the Great City,” is said to be “divided into three parts”—ch. xvi. 19. And, when the Seven Thunders shall have uttered their voices; and the judgments of the last vial shall have had their full effect upon “the air,” firmament, aërial expanse, or constitution of things in the Gentile world, then, the Apostate Laodicean “earth and heaven flee away; and no place is found for them”—ch. xx. 11. They are abolished in a time of trouble, far exceeding in the intensity of its distress the terrors of the sixth Seal; for it will be “a time of trouble such as never was since there was a nation even to that same time”—Dan. xii. 1. When this old Romish Heaven and Earth shall have fled before the face of the Lamb and his Associates, “a New Heavens and a New Earth in which dwells righteousness” (2 Pet. iii. 13) will take their place; when “Jerusalem shall be a rejoicing, and her people a joy”—Isa. lxv. 18. These Heavens and Earth “shall remain before me, saith Yahweh;” even saith the Spirit by John, “a thousand years;” at the end whereof, they will “pass away” to make room for a new and improved constitution of things upon earth, when there shall be no more sin or evil—when death shall be abolished, and every curse shall cease—ch. xxi. 1, 3, 4; xxii. 3.
2.—Earthquakes of the Apocalypse
The earthquakes of the Apocalypse are not concussions of the p. 269 ground from the subterranean, but popular convulsions. In ch. xii. 16, we are told that “the earth helped the Woman, and the earth opened her mouth, and swallowed up the flood which the Dragon cast out of his mouth.” As we shall hereafter “see,” the earth here is the symbol of the people under the dominion of the Dragon. The worldrulers are placed metaphorically in “the heaven;” and therefore according to symbolic fitness, the world ruled by them, the undistinguished and various multitude, is aggregated together as “the earth,” or “small dust of the balance.” Hence, Moses addresses the people and their rulers as “the heavens” and “the earth,” saying in Deut. xxxii. 1, “Give ear, O ye heavens, and I will speak; and hear, O earth, the words of my mouth. My doctrine shall drop as the rain, my speech shall distil as the dew, as the small rain upon the tender herb, and as the showers upon the grass: because I will publish the name of YAHWEH: ascribe ye greatness unto our ELOHIM.” Then, again, in Gen. vi. 11, 12, “The earth was corrupt before the Elohim, and the earth was filled with violence. And Elohim looked upon the earth, and behold it was corrupt; for all flesh had corrupted HIS WAY upon the earth.” In this text, the literal and figurative use of “the earth” is blended; but it is easy to see when it signifies “all flesh,” and the place of its habitation. The figurative use of the phrase is transferred to the Book of Symbols, where it stands for “the peoples,” though not always, but when the context and subject will decide.
When, then, “the earth,” in this sense, is seized with shaking fits, its agitation is metaphorically an earthquake. If the paroxysms are violent, upheaving, and overturning, it is styled, as in the Sixth Seal, “a great earthquake.” The people are shaken; and when, with their upheavings, the luminaries of their political system no longer shine in the possession of the “spoils of office,” and the constitution is destroyed; then the sun, moon, and stars, are darkened and fall, and the heaven departs as a scroll rolling up. Thus, the earthquake operates as the proximate cause of the disturbance in the heavenlies.
“A great earthquake” is foretold in three places of the apocalypse also, “an earthquake” twice without the addition of “great.” The first “great earthquake” is predicted in this seal; the second, in ch. xi. 13; and the third, in ch. xvi. 18. The first revolutionized the whole Greco-Latin Habitable, dethroned Jupiter, cast all his official adherents out of their places, and installed the “Holy Catholic Church” and her Laodiceans in the government of the Roman world. The effects of this “great earthquake” are felt in every part of the globe to this day.
p. 270 The second “great earthquake” overthrew “the tenth of the city;” destroyed all titles; and developed the Reign of Terror, and all its consequents. This popular upheaving brought up from the symbolical abyss, one of the spirits of that “vasty deep” ever ready for any work that will afford scope for self-glorification; and threw him on to the surface as the Napoleonic Scourge of the enemies of God. This “Man of Destiny” left a mark upon society which will not be obliterated till the coming of the Ancient of Days.
The third great apocalyptic earthquake is yet in the future. It is styled “a great earthquake, such as was not since men were upon the earth, so mighty an earthquake, and so great.” The effect of this is the threefold subdivision of the Great City; the fall of the kingdoms of the nations; the judgment of Babylon; the disappearance of the political islands and mountains; and all consequences flowing from these events. Daniel’s “time of trouble” pertains to this earthquake; also Jeremiah’s “Jacob’s trouble,” “Alas!” saith he, “for that day is great, so that none is like it; it is even the time of Jacob’s trouble; but he shall be saved out of it. For it shall come to pass in that day, saith Yahweh Tz’vaoth, I will break his (Esau’s) yoke from off thy neck, and will burst thy bonds, and strangers shall no more serve themselves of him (Jacob): but they shall serve Yahweh their Elohim, and David their King, whom I will raise up unto them”—ch. xxx. 7. The earthquake of Apoc. xi. 19, is the same as this greatest of all earthquakes, being associated with the “great hail.”
The earthquake of ch. viii. 5, is not termed “great.” It occurred before the sounding of the first trumpet. It was an upheaving of the pagans for the recovery of lost privileges and power; but it did not result in the permanent overthrow of the New Order in the State; and therefore it was simply “an earthquake,” or shaking from below without any permanent eclipse of the heavens.
In dismissing the subject of the symbolic earthquakes in general, it may be remarked that, though the apocalypse does not predict the occurrence of physical earthquakes, we are not to conclude that there will be none such in the “time of trouble.” Ezekiel and Zechariah predict a very formidable one, which in Palestine will be attended with great and important, as well as interesting changes. The Mount of Olives will be divided, a valley opened with a flowing river, and there will be a great shaking in the land, and a casting out of the dead from the graves of earth. The prophets treated of the literal and material in which a mystery was involved. This, Peter says, they did not see into; and until the Lamb prevailed to unfold it, “no one in the heaven, nor upon the earth, nor underneath the p. 271 earth was able to open the scroll, nor to see it.” In the prediction of an earthquake that shall divide Olivet, and cause the outflow of a river from the altar base, they did not “see” the mystery of a mighty earthquake that should also contemporarily divide Babylon, and cause an issuing forth of rivers of living waters from the Christ-Altar, that should heal the nations. The apocalypse brings out the mystery of the Deity as he revealed it to the prophet; it is with the mystery symbolically revealed we have here to do; not with the purely literal and material—Apoc. x. 7.
3.—The Sun and Moon of the Heaven
“The SUN became black as sackcloth of hair.” As the sun is the great source of the electrical glory and power of the solar system, it is said in scripture, to “rule the day.” The moon and the stars become visible to us by the reflection of his beams. Their light or glory is borrowed; and when he is darkened, they also are in eclipse. The sun is therefore a very appropriate symbol of the supreme or sovereign power of a political universe. In Joseph’s dream, predictive of his exaltation, and of the homage that would be paid to him by his kindred, his father is represented by the sun, as the ruling authority of the circle; his mother by the moon; and his brethren by eleven stars—Gen. xxxvii. They all “made obeisance to me,” said Joseph; and though highly figurative, Jacob readily perceived its signification, saying, “Shall I and thy mother and thy brethren indeed come to bow down ourselves to thee to the earth?”
This use of the sun, moon, and stars, as representative of persons constituting a domestic circle, and differing from each other in social position, came afterwards to symbolize gradations of powers in the same circle, when it had become sufficiently enlarged to enclose a nation of twelve tribes. Hence, the Spirit in addressing the Zion of the Holy One of Israel now in the days of her mourning, saith in Isai. lx. 20, “Thy Sun shall no more go down; neither shall thy moon withdraw herself.” Here the sun and moon represent the civil and ecclesiastical authority in Zion before they were abolished. And speaking of her destruction by the Chaldeans, the Spirit in Jer. xv. 9, says, “Her sun is gone down while it is yet day.” Her royalty was suppressed; yet her moon and stars continued to shine under the Persian administration. But, a greater calamity was predicted in Joel ii. 10, when the earth should quake, and the heavens tremble; in other words, when “the sun and the moon should p. 272 be dark, and the stars withdraw their shining.” This would be a total eclipse of Israel’s Commonwealth by “the host given to the Little Horn of the Goat;” as foretold in Dan. viii. 9-12: “It waxed great to the host of heaven; and it cast down of the host and of the stars to the ground, and stamped upon them;” which in the interpretation given in verse 24, is explained to signify, “He shall destroy wonderfully, and shall prosper and practice, and shall destroy great ones (the stars) and the people of the Holy Ones”—or the host. Powers on earth do not literally pluck the stars from their spheres and stamp upon them; but they sometimes make sad havoc among the sun, moon, and stars of a political organization. The Lord Jesus reproduced Daniel’s prophecy in his discourse on the destruction of the city that killed the prophets, in saying: “Immediately after the tribulation of those days shall the sun be darkened, and the moon shall not give her light, and the stars shall fall from heaven, and the powers of the heaven (symbolized by these orbs) shall be shaken.”—Matt. xxiv. 29. These were the lights in which there were to be “great signs and fearful sights,” indicative of the παρουσια, or presence, though invisible, of the Son of Man when the Greco-Roman army should be sent by him to destroy the city of his murderers—Matt. xxii. 7. In the same style, Peter speaks of the rapidly approaching fulfilment of the prediction, when the heavens being on fire should be dissolved and should pass away with a great noise, and their elements melt with fervent heat—2 Epist. iii.
But Israel’s was not the only political universe on earth. Their sun has been turned into darkness and their moon into blood; but “the great and notable day of the Lord” has not yet quite come. When it arrives, there will be a sun, moon, and stars shining in all their glory; and, concerning them, the Spirit says: “The Moon shall be confounded and the Sun ashamed, when Yahweh Tz’vaoth shall reign in Mount Zion, and in Jerusalem, and before his ancients gloriously”—Isa. xxiv. 23. These are the sun and moon of the Gentile Heavens; the same sun upon which the fourth angel poured out his vial—Apoc. xvi. 8—the sun which shines in the firmament, or aërial expanse, through which flash the lightnings and roll the thunders in that tempestuous time when men are plagued with a storm of hail “exceeding great,” in the outpouring of the seventh—verses 17-21. These are the sun and the moon which shall stand still in their habitation, when Yahweh, the Commander like to Joshua, “shall march through the land in indignation, and thresh the nations in anger”—Hab. iii. 11, 12. Then, also, in retribution for what the p. 273 Gentiles have done to Israel in putting out the lights of their heaven, shall “the sun and the moon be darkened, and the stars shall withdraw their shining. Yahweh also,” as the Lion of the tribe of Judah, “shall roar out of Zion, and utter his voice from Jerusalem; and the heavens and the earth shall shake: but Yahweh will be the harbor of his people, and the strength of the children of Israel”—Joel iii. 15.
The sun, moon, and stars to be extinguished in “the great and notable day of Yahweh,” from before whose face the heaven in which they shine and the earth over which they shed their rays will flee away, are the luminaries of the Greco-Latin political universe. This political universe is that which is vulgarly styled “Christendom,” or properly the domain of Antichrist, but apocalyptically, “Babylon the Great City.” The sun by which this is enlightened is the Imperial Civil Power; the moon, the Imperial Ecclesiastical; and the stars, the subordinate powers created by the constitution and reflecting the Imperial Glory. They have not always shone with persistent and undimmed brilliancy; for, when the Star fell from the heaven and opened the abyss, the smoke that issued thence darkened the sun and the firmament, or heaven, in which he shone—Apoc. ix. 1, 2; and also, previously to that, which came to pass in the seventh century, “the third part of the sun was smitten, and the third part of the moon, and the third part of the stars, so as the third part of them was “darkened;” and as, according to the decorum of the symbols, this could not occur in nature without affecting the day and the night, it is added, by way of instructing us in the duration of this ternary eclipse, “and the day shone not for a third part of it, and the night likewise”—ch. viii. 12.
In the Sixth Seal symbolization, “the sun became black as sackcloth of hair, the moon became as blood, and the stars of the heaven fell into the earth,” that is, “a third part of them”—ch. xii. 4. This indicates great wrath upon the orders of the state entering into the composition of the symbols, and a great change in the manifestation of their heavens. The sun might recover its brightness, and the moon her silvery hue. Should this be the case, it would indicate that there was “silence in the heaven,” and that, war caused blood there no more to redden “the spirituals of the wickedness in the heavenlies”—ch. viii 1; xii. 8. And such we really find to be the situation. For when “the great day of the Lamb’s wrath” upon “the Dragon and his angels” had been assuaged in the casting them out of the heaven—in other words, when the pagan power that hindered the revelation of the Man of Sin had been punished and removed out of the way—the sun, moon, and stars again shone p. 274 forth from a newly constituted firmament, aërial, or heaven, from the midst of which they diffused their rays over the Roman Habitable as before. But, in order to indicate the effect of the recent revolution and the new character of the heavens, a woman is placed in the sun. She is “clothed with the sun, and the moon under her feet, and upon her head a stephan, or coronal, of twelve stars”—ch. xii. 1. Here were “the Fellowservants”—the “Holy Catholic” element of the Lamb’s espoused (2 Cor. xi. 1-3)—clothed with imperial Roman splendor, and so entering into the elemental constitution of, not the Sun of Righteousness, but of the supreme imperial power of the new Roman Christendom—the sun of the Roman world. But the sunshine of the world’s heavens is no condition for the Spouse of Christ. The Bowman of the first seal had “conquered,” and won the starry stephan; but, this accomplished, it was no place for “the Brethren” to disport themselves “in purple and fine linen, faring sumptuously every day.” The time, therefore, having now come for the Spirit to spue the rich Laodicean fellowservants out of his mouth, and thereby to mark the broad line of separation that was henceforth to divide “the Brethren” from the Kingdom of the Clergy, and all its pride and circumstance of worldly pomp and glory, the Woman fled from the dazzling sunshine into the deep shadow of the Roman wilderness, where she was to be fed for a thousand two hundred and sixty symbolic days.
But the history of the Sixth Head of the Dragon illustrates the remarkable appropriateness of the sun and moon as the symbols of the imperiality of the Roman State. The reader will please return with me to the reign of Elagabalus, A. D. 218, parallel with the period of the third seal, of some of the transactions of which Gibbon furnishes in substance the following account:
Elagabalus caused his portrait to be placed in the Senate House, over the altar of Victory. He was painted in his sacerdotal robes of silk and gold, after the loose and flowing fashion of the Medes and Phoenicians. His head was covered with a lofty tiara, his numerous collars and bracelets were adorned with gems of inestimable value. His eyebrows were tinged with black, and his cheeks painted with an artificial red and white. Such was the ornamentation of the High Priest of the Sun.
The Sun was worshipped at Emesa under the name of Elagabalus, and under the form of a black conical stone, which was believed to have fallen from heaven at Emesa. To this protecting deity the emperor ascribed his elevation to the throne. The display of superstitious gratitude was the only serious business of his reign. The p. 275 triumph of the Sun over all the religions of the earth was the great object of his zeal and vanity; and the appellation of Elagabalus (for, as pontiff and favorite, he assumed the name of his god) was dearer to him than all the titles of imperial greatness.
In a solemn procession through the streets of Rome, the way was strewed with gold dust; the black stone, set in precious gems (a notable antithesis to the White Stone engraved with a New Name which no man knoweth saving he that receiveth it—Apoc. ii. 17), was placed on a chariot drawn by six milk-white horses richly caparisoned. The imperial fanatic held the reins, and, supported by his ministers, moved slowly backwards, that he might perpetually enjoy the felicity of the divine presence of the Sun. In a magnificent temple raised on the Palatine Mount, the sacrifices of the Sun were celebrated with every circumstance of cost and solemnity. The richest wines, the most extraordinary victims, and the rarest aromatics, were profusely consumed on his altar. Around the altar a chorus of Syrian damsels performed their lascivious dances to the sound of barbarian music, whilst the gravest personages of the state and army, clothed in long Phœnician tunics officiated in the meanest functions, with affected zeal and secret indignation.
To this temple, as to the common centre of religious worship, Elagabalus removed the Ancilia, the Paladium, and all the insignia of the superstition of Numa. A crowd of inferior deities were set up in various stations to attend, as it were, upon the Majesty of the Sun; but his court was considered still imperfect, till a goddess of distinguished rank was admitted to his couch. Pallas had been first chosen for his consort, but as it was feared that her warlike terrors might affright the soft delicacy of an Eastern deity, THE MOON, adored by the Africans under the name of Astarte, the Queen of Heaven, was deemed a more suitable companion for the Sun. Her image, with the rich offerings of her temple as a marriage portion, was transported with solemn pomp from Carthage to Rome, and the day of these mystic nuptials was a general festival in the capital and throughout the empire.
Thus were the Sun and Moon inaugurated as the sovereign deities of the Roman world. After the death of Elagabalus, they still retained their high and sovereign position in the pagan heavens and the state. Gibbon informs us that Constantine had a particular veneration for Apollo, or the Sun, to which Julian, surnamed “the Apostate” by catholics, alludes in his orations. His words are as follow:—“The devotion of Constantine (while a pagan) was more p. 276 peculiarly directed to the genius of the Sun, the Apollo of the Greek and Roman mythology, and he was pleased to be represented with the symbols of the god of light and poetry. The unerring shafts of that deity, the brightness of his eyes, his laurel wreath (stephan), immortal beauty, and elegant accomplishments, seem to point him out as the patron of a young hero. The altars of Apollo were crowned with the votive offerings of Constantine, and the credulous multitude were taught to believe that the emperor was permitted to behold with mortal eyes the visible majesty of that tutelar deity, and that, either waking or in a vision, he was blessed with the auspicious omens of a long and victorious reign. The sun was universally celebrated as the invincible guide and protector of Constantine; and the pagans might reasonably expect that the insulted god would pursue with unrelenting vengeance the impiety of his ungrateful favorite” when he became a catholic. Thus, it was a worshipper of the Sun, himself a constituent of the sun of the political heaven, who with adulterous embrace united the Catholic Jezebel to the Roman State. She was clothed with the sun, and standing upon the moon, became symbolically identified with that orb as the future Queen Consort of the Imperial Majesty of the heavens of the Laodicean Apostasy.
But, in the apocalypse, the sun is also used to symbolize the enlightening majesty of the millennial heavens, which are to succeed and supersede the heavens of the apostasy, in which at present shine over all the nominally “christian world,” the spirituals of the mystery of iniquity. In ch. i. 16. the symbolic Son of Man’s countenance is “as the sun shining in his strength.” Again, in ch. x. the same multitudinous personage appears as a mighty messenger descending from heaven, his “face being as it were the sun:” and in ch. xvi. 12, certain “kings” are mentioned, and styled “risings of a Sun,” in the phrase, ἡ οδος των βασιλεων των απο ἀνατολων ἡλιον. These kings that are “the risings,” are aggregately the Sun-power of the Millennial Heavens, “from whose face the earth and heaven” of the Apostasy “flee away”—ch. xx. 11. They are the Millennial Sun-Power, because they are emanations from “the Sun of Righteousness,” whose beams have healed them in quickening them with incorruptibility and power—Mal. iv. 2. Having become elements of this power, they go forth, and tread down the wicked of the earth and sea with their “feet as pillars of fire”—“feet like unto fine brass, as if they glowed in a furnace;” “for they shall be ashes under the soles of their feet, in the day that Yahweh Tz’vaoth (the Spirit who shall be Hosts) shall work.” This Millennial Sun, then, symbolizes p. 277 all the saints when “glorified together” with Jesus—Rom. viii. 17, 29, 32: and, when they “rest from their labors” of destroying Babylon who oppressed them; of giving the worshippers of the Beast to drink of the wine of divine wrath; of binding the Dragon, and shutting him up in the abyss; and of “enlightening the earth with their glory”—they will “then shine forth as the sun in the kingdom of their Father;” or, as the same idea is expressed in Dan. xii. 3, “they shall shine as the brightness of the firmament; and as the stars for the Olahm and beyond”—Mat. xiii. 43.
The glorified and victorious saints, then, will be the Sun of the Millennial Kingdom. They will therefore have “no need of the sun, neither of the moon, to shine in it”—ch. xxi. 23: and “the nations of them being saved shall walk in the light of it.” These are the New Heavens and New Earth. How unlike those of the Apostasy by which they are preceded. These new heavens will “declare the glory of AIL; and their firmament, or aërial, His handiwork, Day unto day will utter speech; and night unto night will show knowledge: and there will be no speech nor language where their voice is not heard. THEIR rule will go out through all the earth, and THEIR words to the end of the world.” Paul has quoted these words in Rom. x. 18, as predictive of the apostolic proclamation of the kingdom. There was great significancy in such an application; for they who made the proclamation will constitute the heavens that rule—the personal Son of Man on the throne of his glory; and the apostles on the thrones of David’s house; with all the approved and glorified sharing in their administration, in the grand era of regeneration—Matt. xix. 28; Apoc. ii. 26; iii. 21. “Among them he sets a habitation for the sun, who is as a Bridegroom coming out of his chamber, and rejoiceth as a strong man to run a race. His going forth is from the end of the heaven, and his circuit to the ends of it: and there is nothing hid from the heat thereof”—Ps. xix. 1-6. This bridegroom is the Sun, and his bride, the moon, and her distinguished companions, the stars of the brilliant firmament which will be displayed as the handiwork of the Spirit; when, co-operating with them, he looks forth as the morning, “fair as the moon, clear as the sun, and terrible as an army with banners”—Cant. vi. 10; Apoc. xiv. 13; Zech. iv. 6.
4.—Concluding Remarks
This sixth seal is a prophetic summary of what is more particularly related in the twelfth chapter, concerning the Woman, her p. 278 man child, the Dragon, and the war in the heaven between the symbolical Michael and his angels on the one side; and the great red Dragon and his angels, on the other. I shall, therefore, follow the apocalyptic arrangement, and defer entering into details until I arrive at that chapter. A few things, however, may be presented here of a general character. The seal-prophecy predicts an exceedingly tempestuous period, which in an especial manner affects the ruling orders of the Roman Habitable. The first three verses represent this in the expressive imagery of symbolical prophecy. There is much grandeur in the symbolization. The earthquake, the darkness, the falling of stars, the hurricane, the curling up departure of the firmament, and the removal of the mountains and islands from their places—all these phenomena in combined operation, show a political universe in a state of awful and terrific tumult. The last three verses of the prophecy interpret what had gone before, and demonstrate that this was the true condition of things in the period succeeding to the termination of the fifth seal, when the Lamb’s enemies found that it was more easy for them to decree the extinction of the christian name than to effect it. The situation was awful and terrific to “the kings of the earth, and the great men, and the rich, and the military chieftains, and the mighty ones, and every bondman, and every freeman;” for the peril of the time caused them to “conceal themselves in the caverns, and among the rocks of the mountains;” and to call on them to fall upon them, and hide them from the vengeance in execution. Here were all ranks and classes of society recognizing the crisis; as “the great day of the Lamb’s wrath” upon them. They had been warring against him upwards of two hundred and eighty years; and in all that long period had sought by every and any means in their power, to suppress and extirpate his name from the earth. But hitherto they had failed; and they now perceived that the death-struggle for ascendancy on earth had overtaken them.
The Sixth Seal was opened A. D. 311-12, and closed A. D. 324, a period of twelve years.. It opened with the Roman empire subject to four emperors, Licinius, Maximin, Maxentius, and Constantine; and paganism the religion of the state: it closed with the battle of Chrysopolis, or Scutari, as it is now called, the result of which was the reunion of the empire under Constantine as the sole emperor; and the establishment of the Catholic Apostasy as the Lunar Bride of the Roman Sun. In the defeat of Hadrianople, which preceded that of Scutari, the historian says, that “the greater part of the fugitives retired to the mountains.” This they did, of course, p. 279 for the purpose of concealment from the conqueror who had won the wreath, as predicted in the seal. Though the mountains did not fall on them, they hid them until their panic having subsided they surrendered themselves to the discretion of the victor.