History Unveiling Prophecy by H. Grattan Guinness - Part III

Table of Contents

CONCLUSION

No newly invented system of Apocalyptic interpretation have we set forth in this volume, but the old interpretation which has been ” from the beginning,”ripened and mellowed by the influence of time.

“none other things”

If the Apocalypse could speak to-day concerning itself it might employ the language of Paul, “I continue unto this day, witnessing both to small and great, saying none other things’ than those which the prophets and Moses did say should come;”for while opening to us new mysteries of Providence, it gives us no outline of futurity but that which was set forth from the dawn of revelation. It is but the expansion of preceding prophecies. The promise that the seed of the woman should bruise the serpent’s head contains it all. The king seated on Zion in the second Psalm, breaking in pieces his enemies with a rod of iron is the same as the King of kings and Lord of lords, wielding the rod of iron to subdue His foes in the visions of the Apocalypse; and the king of the one hundred and tenth Psalm, seated at God’s right hand, who is a priest forever after the order of Mel-chizedek is none other than the exalted Redeemer of the Apocalypse, who offers before the throne “the prayers of the saints,” sanctified and sweetened with the “much incense “which mingles with them in the golden censer of His high priestly service. Ezekiel saw in his prophetic visions the “living creatures”of the Apocalypse, and Isaiah its “new heavens and earth.”Daniel beheld in vision its wild beasts, saw its ten horned Roman empire, its persecuting Antichrist, its suffering saints, its mysterious “times and seasons,”its coming in the clouds of heaven of “the Son of Man,”its resurrection of the dead, its final judgment scene, and its everlasting kingdom of the God of heaven. Zechariah beheld its meek majestic King whose dominion was to be “from the river to the ends of the earth,”saw Him coming “with all His saints “in that day “known to the Lord,”to be “king over all the earth,”when there should be “one Lord, and His name one.”John the Baptist beheld its “Lamb of God who taketh away the sin of the world.”And above all our Lord Jesus Christ Him- self revealed that clear and comprehensive outline of the future which contains within its framework all the series of events set forth in the visions of the Apocalypse; the progress of the kingdom of God, the wars, the famines, the pestilences, the persecutions, the false prophets, the apostasies, the tribulations, the universal preaching of the Gospel; the shaking of the heavens, the darkening of the luminaries, the falling of the stars, the calling of men on the rqcks to hide them from the wrath of the Lamb, the coming of the Son of Man in the clouds of heaven, with His angels, to gather His saints from the uttermost parts of the earth, the judgment and reward of saints, the marriage of the Lamb, the final judgment of the world deciding the eternal issues of life and death, and the Palingenesia, or regeneration of all things, in which the “children of the resurrection ” are to be made “equal to the angels”; all these great and wondrous events were foretold by our Lord during the course of His earthly ministry. And the apostasy predicted by St. Paul, and the other apostles, with its “Man of Sin,”its “Son of perdition,”its Antichrist, its profaned temple, its deluded multitudes, and the saints protected from its peril and doom, is that apostasy with its blasphemous persecuting head, its idolatrous worship, and its suffering witnesses occupying so large and central a place in the vi- sions of St. John. The New Jerusalem, the city of the living God, on its Mount Zion, with its “innumerable hosts of angels,”its “general assembly and church of the first-born enrolled in heaven,”and its ” spirits of just men made perfect,”so gloriously described by Paul in the epistle to the Hebrews, that “Jerusalem which is above which is the mother of us all”of which he speaks in the Epistle to the Galatians, is none other than the New Jerusalem of the visions of the Apocalypse, the city of saints, bearing in its foundations the names of “the twelve apostles of the Lamb,”and on its gates the names of the tribes of Israel. God’s long-suffering patience, deferring the Advent of “the day of the Lord “in mercy to a sinful race, yet bring- ing it at last, when unexpected, “as a thief in the night,”when the heavens shall be wrapped together as a scroll, and the earth dissolved with fire, to make way for the new heavens and earth, all these which John beheld in Patmos, were seen by Peter years before, and made the subject of his last warning words. For the testimony of prophecy is one: and the Apocalypse but the last and most complete “unveiling”of that course of things partially and progressively revealed in previous prophetic teachings. Thus the last book in the sacred volume of Revelation teaches us “none other things”than those which the voices of the prophets declared from the earliest times; as the light of the noon is none other than the brighter radiance of the light which had shone from the dawning of the day.

O holy harmony of inspiration, O sacred continuity of testimony, thou art worthy of the God of Truth, to whom all things have been known from the foundation of the world.

Time as an interpreter

We have shown in the preceding pages that history has all along revealed the meaning of prophecy; that it did so in Old Testament times; that it did so at the advent of Christ, the accomplishment of His sufferings, and glories, expounding by their fulfilment the prophecies of these events; and that it has done so ever since, opening from century to century the meaning of the mysterious predictions relating to the course of Christian history. We have thus shown that

1. The events of history explained the meaning of the Six first Seals of the Apocalypse.The early victories of the gospel of Christ, the rapid spread of Christian teachings, and extension of the Christian church through-out the Roman Empire, in the face of tremendous opposition from Jew and Gentile, explained the meaning of the first seal, the going forth of the rider upon the white horse, ” conquering and to conquer.”No doubt whatever rested on the minds of the primitive Christians, as to the significance of this opening Apocalyptic seal; and the view they took has held a leading position ever since. It can be traced in every century, from the first Apocalyptic commentary extant, that of Victorinus, down to Alford’s commentary on the Greek New Testament published in our own days. The application of this vision to the conquests of Christ is confirmed by the analogous vision in the nineteenth chapter of the going forth of the rider on the white horse of victory, and the name the rider bears, “The Word of God,””the King of Kings, and Lord of Lords.”

The calamities which fell upon the Roman Empire in the second and third centuries, explained the second, third, and fourth seals. The dreadful civil wars by which the empire was long distracted, the oppressive fiscal policy resulting in widespread famines, and above all the desolating plague which in the third century swept off one half the population, explained the meaning of the going forth of the riders on the red, black, and livid horses, whose mission it was “to take peace from the earth,”that “men should kill one another “; to tax the necessaries of life ; and to “kill with sword, with hunger, with death, and with the beasts of the earth.”The commentary of Victorinus recognizes the.application; and the view became current in the early church that the calamities which were weakening the Roman Empire and preparing the way for its destruction, were not only fulfilments of Apocalyptic prophecy, but also of our Lord’s last great prophetic discourse on the Mount of Olives in which He forewarned Hisdisciples of wars, famines, and pestilences as precursors of His coming, and of “the end of the age.”

The cruel persecutions of the Church by pagan Rome, especially in the time of Diocletian, giving rise to the era of the martyrs, explained only too clearly the meaning of the fifth seal, the seal of martyrs.

The overthrow of the pagan Roman Empire which followed in the fourth century, shaking as with an earthquake, and darkening as with an eclipse of the heavenly luminaries the state and religion of ancient Rome, interpreted the sixth seal; especially as that appalling event was viewed as an adumbration of the final judgment of the world, in the great day of “the wrath of the Lamb.”

2. The triumph of Christianity over Paganism in the fourth century explained to the Church of that period the meaning of the vision in Revelation12, of the casting down of the persecuting dragon from his throne. Representations of the prostrate dragon were inscribed by Con-stantine upon his coins, and above it the symbol of the victorious Cross; and the joy and triumph of the early Church found expression in the glowing words in the Apocalypse, “Now is come salvation, and strength, and the kingdom of our God,”and the power of His Christ; for the accuser of our brethren is cast down which accused them before God day and night; and they overcame him by the blood of the Lamb, and by the word of their testimony; and they loved not their lives unto the death (Rev. 12: 10, 11). This notable victory of Christianity over Paganism led the early Church to adopt an erroneous interpretation of the vision of the millennial reign of Christ “and His saints and martyrs. The binding of Satan for a thousand years, that he should “deceive the nations no more till the thousand years should be fulfilled,”was regarded by the Church of the fifth and following centuries as an accomplished fact. The Church of the Middle Ages erroneously believed herself to be living in the millennium! Not till the seventeenth century did the church escape from this false interpretation of prophecy, compelled to abandon it by the stern teachings of historical events.

3. The Gothic invasions of the fourth and fifth centuries, by which the Western Roman Empire was overthrown, and broken into fragments, amid terrible bloodshed and desolation, explained the meaning of the four first trumpets; while the Saracenic and Turkish overthrow of the Eastern Roman Empire which followed revealed the significance of the fifth and sixth-trumpets. In the light of their fulfilment in history the trumpets of the Apocalypse are seen to possess the same character, and general purpose. Without exception they are “woe”trumpets; trumpets of war and desolation, heralding and sounding forth the overthrow of the Roman Empire Western and Eastern. The meaning of the seventh trumpet, with its seven vials of judgment on “Babylon “and the “Beast”remained a mystery till the outbreak of the French Revolution. The fifth and sixth trumpets had long before been clearly understood to refer to the Saracenic and Turkish conquests in the East. As the first four trumpets precede the fifth and sixth their application to the Gothic invasions which overthrew the Empire of Western Rome became a natural, and almost inevitable inference.

4. The rise of the Papacy and revival of the Roman Empire under Charlemagne, the “Holy Roman Empire”which from its foundation in A . D . 800, continued for a thousand years till its overthrow by Napoleon, cast unexpected light on the marvellous prophecy in Revelation 13, of the restoration of the Roman Empire in its second, or Gothic form, under its revived eighth head; the “deadly wound”of the seventh head having been “healed.”The identity of this eighth head with the “little horn”of Daniel 7, arising together with the ten horns of the divided Empire, is so plain and evident as to need no comment. Both occupy the same place, both have the same “mouth speaking great things and blasphemies,”both are cruel persecutors of the saints, and both last for the same period. Long has the Church recognized in these symbolical predictions the representation of the Roman Papacy. In a multitude of particulars history has here fulfilled prophecy, and illuminated its meaning as with the light of day.

5. The glorious Reformation of the sixteenth century explained the vision in Revelation 10, of the sudden descent and action of the rainbow crowned Covenant Angel, whose voice was as the roar of a lion, and who held in his right hand “a little book open”! That Reformation gave back the Bible to the nations, and inaugurated the age of the book. It fulfilled the command of the angel of the vision to re-publish the gospel to “peoples, and nations, and tongues, and kings.”It fulfilled the command to “measure,”or reform and restore, the Church, represented by the temple, altar, and worshipping people; while rejecting of “casting out”the portion of the professing Church answering to “the court which is without,”which was “given to the Gentiles “to be trodden under foot for 1,260 years (Rev. 11:2). Clearly comprehended by the Reformers of the sixteenth century this great prophecy was acted on by them to the letter, as the divine plan, and authorization of their work.

At this point the revealing angel of the vision, standing “upon the sea and upon the earth,”as claiming both for the sphere of his command, lifts up his band to heaven and swears “by Him that liveth forever and ever, who created heaven and the things that therein are, and the earth and the things that therein are, and the sea and the things which are therein, that there should be time no longer (or that time shall no further be prolonged), but in the days of the voice of the seventh angel, when he shall begin to sound, the mystery of God should be finished, as He hath declared to His servants the prophets” (Rev. 10:5-7). The sense gathered is that time should no longer be extended “to the so far permitted reign of evil, the seventh trumpet’s era being its fixed determined limit.”1 A comparison of this oath of the revealing angel with that in Daniel 12, relating to the three and a half “times “of the “scattering of the power of the holy people,”sheds additional light on its meaning, and confirms its solemnity and importance,—-God’s oath, sworn in Reformation days, as to the proximate termination of the prophetic times, their ending with the seventh trumpet, whose sounding was even then at hand.

6. The tremendous papal reaction of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries by whose anti-Protestant wars, persecutions and massacres Europe was deluged with blood, and far more martyrs put to death than in all the persecutions of the early Church by Pagan Rome, explained the “war”against Christ’s sackcloth clothed witnesses of the wild beast power in Revelation ii; and the cruel suppression of the Huguenots and Waldenses at the time of the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes: and the immediately succeeding English Revolution, with its restoration of the persecuted Protestant church to civil and religious freedom, and political ascendency, occurring at the predicted close of the sixth trumpet woe, and shortly before the sounding of the seventh trumpet of the French Revolution, cast a flood of light upon the meaning of the death, resurrection, and ascension of the witnesses—Christian witnesses whose position, action, testimony, sufferings and success, were typified of old by those of the Jewish prophets and Reformers, in the dark days of Baalitical and Babylonish apostasies.

7. The French Revolution in which as by the explosion of the long pent-up forces of a volcano the papal church and state were suddenly torn from their foundations, and overwhelmed in common ruin; and its repeated after waves of war and desolation affecting every throne and country of Europe, explained the outpouring of the introductory Vials of judgment under the seventh trumpet; vials expressly stated to be poured forth on the persecuting wild beast power, his followers, worshippers, and throne; those who had “shed the blood of saints and prophets,”and to whom in righteous vengeance blood was given “to drink.”The wasting away of the Turkish power which has followed in the East has explained the ” drying up “of the Euphratean flood of the sixth trumpet, or Turkish woe; a drying up represented under the sixth vial. The seventh vial poured out on “Babylon the great,”remains to be fulfilled. There may be a doubt as to its commencing point, but the accomplishment of its main predictions is certainly future, though near at hand.

8. The character and history of the Church of Rome, her proud position as seated on “the seven hills”of the Imperial city, and “reigning over the kings “and peoples of the earth, her gorgeous self-adornment, her fabulous wealth and luxury, her adulterous association with kings and princes of the Roman Empire, her multiplied idolatries, and cruel persecutions of the saints, and her judgment as finally hated and cast off”, stripped and torn by the ten horned wild beast power which had previously carried her, and done her bidding; all this has been recognized as marvellously portrayed in the Apocalyptic vision of the harlot “Babylon the Great,”drunken with “the blood of the saints, and of the martyrs of Jesus.”

Like the apostle John who “wondered”as he gazed on this vision “with a great wonder,”1 so do we contemplate it with admiration and astonishment; so marvellous has been the historic reality, and so marvellous its prediction. Its representation forms the most complete and striking portrait in the Apocalypse; a portrait whose terrible out- lines and vivid colours have arrested the attention of the Church for ages; a portrait set as a warning to God’s people in danger of being deceived and ensnared by the pretensions and wiles of the great church of the apostasy, and called to separate themselves from her sins, that they may escape her doom.

9. The duration of the papal power for the long period of 1,260 years from its commencement under the Pope exalting decrees of the Emperors Justinian and Phocas to its fall in the French Revolution of 1793, the revolution of 1848, and the final overthrow of the Temporal Power in 1870, has established the meaning of the “1,260 days “of the Apocalyptic prefiguration; has demonstrated the truth of the year-day theory; a demonstration sealed by the discoveries of astronomy as to the secular and cyclical character of the prophetic times in the book of Daniel and in the Apocalypse; confirming and settling with exactness their duration; and exhibiting their position, as integral parts of a great system of times, natural and revealed.

Slowly thus, century by century, time has interpreted the meaning of the mysterious visions of prophecy relating to the long and complex course of Christian history, clearing away their obscurities, as it has translated their anticipations into accomplished facts. Under its operation the apocalypse of prophecy has to a large extent given place to the apocalypse of history; the shadowy outline of the one to the substance of the other. Providence has proved the key to prophecy; and has confirmed on the whole that historic interpretation to which the Church of Christ has most commonly given her adhesion. The Praeterist interpretation which would confine the reference of Apocalyptic prophecy to events in the time of Nero, and the fall of Pagan Rome,—disproved by the post-Neronic date of the Apocalypse as revealed in the time of Domitian—has been cast into oblivion by the discoveries of time; and on the other hand the reveries of Futurism have been shown to be speculations concerning future fulfilments of predictions which for the most part have been already accomplished. As time has been the great interpreter of prophecy in the past, so doubtless will it continue to be in the future. To wait and watch for its discoveries is clearly the wisest course; curbing the premature flight of speculation; standing on the firm ground of ever evolving fact; leaving God to be His own interpreter in the Providential acts destined to fulfill and illuminate His spoken words.

Nineteen centuries of the fulfillment of New Testament prophecies concerning the course of events during the Christian dispensation lie behind us. The fall of Jerusalem, the triumphs of the Gospel, the vicissitudes of the Roman Empire, the sufferings of the Church under Pagan Rome, the victory of the martyrs, the abolition of Paganism and establishment of Christianity, the gradual development of the great apostasies in the West and in the East, the overthrow of the Western Empire by Gothic invasions, and of the Eastern Empire by the Saracens and Turks, the depressed and hidden condition of the true Church during the middle ages, the great Reformation of the sixteenth century, the slaughter and resurrection of the Christian witnesses, the retributive judgments of the French Revolution, the universal proclamation of the Gospel in modern times, the fall of the Papal temporal powerm at the moment of the highest act of papal self-exaltation, and at the date anticipated for centuries by students of the prophetic word, the wasting away of Turkish power, the issuing forth of spirits of delusion, Ronitsh, Ritualistic and Infidel in our own days, and the visible commencement of the rise of the Jewish people from the depression of ages, of their unification, and of their restoration to the land of their fathers, all these events by their striking fulfilments of the anticipations of prophecy have confirmed our faith in the divine inspiration of the Scriptures. In vain do the restless waves of scepticism dash against the base of that impregnable rock. And now astronomy is adding its testimony to that of history in confirmation of the prophetic word. The stars in their courses are fighting for Israel. The sacred “times and seasons “of the law, equally with those of the prophets are found to possess a hidden astronomic character, binding them together as a systematic whole, linking them indissolubly with the System of Nature, proclaiming their true measures, settling their historic place, and demonstrating the divineness of their origin.

The folly of those who misled by the rash speculations which have arisen in modern times under the name of science, have denied to Scripture all insight into the system of nature, is becoming apparent. There is no science, say they, in the Bible! There is a deeper science there than they have investigated, a science yet to be developed in the future with convincing clearness, and taught in class-books among the elementary facts of Bible knowledge. The law of Moses, say they, was the compilation of unscrupulous priests in later times. But astronomy is rising up to rebuke them with its evidence of the profound connection of Mosaic and Prophetic Times and Seasons, as a harmonious system adjusted to the chronology of redemption history.

The Bible, say they, contains the grossest errors. But the fresh examination of its teachings which Bible criticism has provoked, reveals the fact that no absolute disproof exists of a single historic or doctrinal statement in Scripture. The creation of the world in the stages described in Genesis has never been disproved, but is even confirmed as to its general outline by the findings of geology. Astronomy proclaims light to be, the eldest occupant of the universe, just as does the sublime opening of the Bible account of creation. The creation of man in the image of God has never been disproved, and his merely animal origin is but the theory of a sceptical naturalist who confessed that he had lost the sense he once possessed of the presence of God in nature, and his action in the government of the world. The fall of man has never been disproved, but is confirmed by the witness of history, and the voice of experience. The occurrence of the flood has never been disproved but is confirmed by universal tradition. What if we have to modify our ideas as to its absolute universality, if it was universal as to the race of man, and the then known habitable world? The account of the Bible as to the post- diluvian population has never been disproved, its Japhetic, Semitic, and Hamitic elements, and their dispersion from the valley region of the Tigris and Euphrates. The discoveries of archaeology are exalting our ideas of the antiquity of civilization in the region of Assyria, and evidences are accumulating of the migration of races from that ancient world centre. The noble narrative of the call of Abraham from Ur of the Chaldees which opens the Jewish and Christian pages of redemption story has never been disproved, and the history of the patriarch remains to-day like the inscriptions engraved on the granite monuments of Egypt, indestructible by the ravages of Time. The very name of Abraham, father of many nations, is a prophecy which every age has fulfilled, and whose marvellous anticipation of the future is but enlarged and exalted by the widening course of events in Jewish, Mohammedan, and Christian history. The Sinaitic revelation has never been disproved, and the Jews remain today a witness to its’ reality by their adherence to its legislation.

The conquest of Canaan and its division among the tribes has never been disproved, and the history of the Jewish occupation of the land confirms its truth, while the labours of Palestine exploration in our day have served to verify the names and positions of countless places mentioned in the book of Joshua. The inscriptions of Moab, of Shishak king of Egypt, in the days of the son of Solomon, the records of the Assyrians, the Babylonians, and the Persians, but confirm the truth of later Jewish history, which from the time of the captivities moves in the full light of amply verified events. The same may be said of the whole of New Testament history. As to the doctrines of the Bible none of these have been disproved, or ever will be. We repeat it, no one important historic event, or doctrine in the Bible has ever been absolutely disproved, while on the other hand the proofs of the truth of Bible history and doctrine are accumulating year by year, and this largely as a result of the attacks to which they have been subjected. And the inward witness of the human soul to the truth of Bible teachings remains unaltered and unanswerable. No sooner has scepticism completed in the writings of Spencer its alleged destruction of religion than the breath of a divine revival makes the reality and power of religion more apparent than before.

The skeptic boldly proclaims the retreat of the tide of Christian faith, but scarce have the words fallen from his lips than the incoming waves of the advancing tide of spiritual religion roll over the spot he occupied, and falsify his presumptuous declaration.

And thus the last great prophecy in the Bible, the Apocalypse, which has suffered from the baseless speculations of its friends, and the unscrupulous attacks of its foes, lifts up its voice in these our days, clear as a trumpet, to teach the true philosophy of Christian history, and to confirm the faith of God’s people by its exhibition of a knowledge of the future possessed in apostolic times, immeasurably transcending that of mortal man. In the course of events which it reveals we behold the mirror of the decline and fall of the Roman empire so eloquently narrated in Gibbon’s monu-mental work, and of the complex and troubled story of the Christian church, the story of its trials and triumphs, of its apostasies and reformations, and of its actual condition in the days in which we live. And as we study the one and the other, the story of the decline of human governments, and the rise of the divine, we are impressed with its profound connection with the remoter history of the past, and with the progress and prospects of the world. The kingdom of God is seen to be the true goal of history, and the revolutions of the past take their place as acts in a general movement whose course has been foretold from the earliest ages, a movement as much beyond the power of man to arrest as the sweep of worlds in the amplitudes of space. And who can measure the power which the apocalyptic prophecy has exerted on the faith and practice of the Christian church from age to age? Who can measure its influence on Christian hope and Christian courage? Has it not been the strength of the martyrs, the inspiration of the reformers, the support of the confessors and witnesses of all the Christian centuries? Has it not been a lamp in the darkness of the darkest ages of the past? Is it not as the bright and morning star of the times in which we live, the herald of a new and better day? And are not its visions of the future the lofty and luminous vistas through which the church militant gazes into an eternity to come, the magic mirror in which she beholds the glories of the church triumphant? Does she not sit in the auditorium of its sublime revelations, and listen as through a telephonic instrument adjusted to the sounds of the celestial region, to the songs of innumerable harpers harping with their harps, and the thunders of redemption praises? Is she not brought by its wondrous revelations, while still journeying in the world which is, under the power of the greater and more glorious world which is to come? Is not the future, in its sublimest features thus made present to her, and the unseen made visible, and as enduring, more real even than the fleeting things around her? Are not those celestial visions the inspiration of her sweetest songs, and do they not shine before her gaze in the supreme moment when she reaches the boundary of mortal life, and the things of time and sense fade from her view forever?

O glorious and sacred prophecy, thou sublimest chapter in the sublime volume of revelation, thou wonder of our childhood’s imagination, thou mystery of our manhood’s thought, thou star of our pilgrim wanderings, thou sunburst of our maturist conceptions, by thee we behold death’s conqueror planting his triumphant feet upon our deadliest foe. By thee we behold the morn in which He will wipe all tears from off all faces, when sorrow and sighing shall flee away.

Thy trumpets of woe are but the preludes of thy trumpets of victory, and the darkness of thy night of sorrow of the brightness of thy morning without clouds. Thine are the martyrs, thine the conquerors. They stood amid thy flames, % they stand on thy sea of glass mingled with fire. Thine is the wilderness of desolation, thine the paradise of God. Babylon and Jerusalem are thine, the proud city on its seven hills of sin and shame, and the city of holiness on its abiding Zion. The lonely isle of banishment is thine, and the society of blissful multitudes in the habitations of saints and angels. Thine is the widowhood of the church, and thine the marriage of the Lamb. The sackcloth clothed witnesses are thine and thine the saints in their shining robes of light. Yea thine is the Victor, who died, and rose, and lives forevermore. From him radiate all thy beams of glory, for thou art “the revelation of Jesus Christ,”and “the testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy.”And thou art the final chorus in the anthem of revelation, the climax of its triumphant praise. In thy fields of glory, in thy city of felicity, the last utterances of revelation sound upon our ears. In thine endlessness is its finis, for thine end has no end, and is but the beginning of eternity. Fit termination of the volume of the book of the eternal, in thee ends the deathless story of redeeming love. In thy multitude that no man can number, of all nations, kindreds, tribes, and tongues, who have come out of great tribulation, and washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb, the palm-bearing multitude before the throne of God, we behold the fruit of the Redeemer’s travail, the reward of the anguish of the divine sufferer on Calvary’s cross. In that innumerable host of blood-washed victors we behold the fulfilment of the prevision of His troubled yet triumphant soul, “I, if I be lifted up, will draw all men unto Me.””A multitude that no man can number,”a joy that none can measure, a life that shall never end. Sin thou art pardoned; sorrow thou art no more, death thou art swallowed up of life, Thanatos thou art replaced by Athanasia. In thee, thou Palingenesia the goal is reached; in thee thou victory of goodness the love of God is perfected. Shine deathless day, sound ceaseless hallelujahs, and let all nature, all worlds, all angels, join the chorus of joy. For behold a New Creation rises never more to be dimmed with shades of sin and grief, and sheds its transcendent light on a measureless universe.

“BEHOLD I COME QUICKLY, AND MY REWARD IS WITH ME, TO RENDER UNTO EACH MAN ACCORDING AS HIS WORK IS.”

“OCCUPY TILL I COME.”