And there was given me a reed like unto a rod; and the angel stood, saying, Rise, and measure the temple of God, and the altar, and them that worship therein. But the court which is without the temple leave out, and measure it not; for it is given unto the Gentiles: and the holy city shall they tread under foot forty and two months. And I will give power unto my two witnesses, and they shall prophesy a thousand two hundred and three score days, clothed in sackcloth. These are the two olive trees, and the two candlesticks standing before the God of the earth. And if any man will hurt them, fire proceedeth out of their mouth, and devoureth their enemies; and if any man will hurt them, he must in this manner be killed. These have power to shut heaven, that it rain not in the days of their prophecy: and have power over waters to turn them to blood, and to smite the earth with all plagues, as often as they will. And when they shall have finished their testimony, the beast that ascendeth out of the bottomless pit shall make war against them, and shall overcome them, and kill them. And their dead bodies shall lie in the street of the great city, which spiritually is called Sodom and Egypt, where also our Lord was crucified. And they of the people and kindreds and tongues and nations shall see their dead bodies three days and an half, and shall not suffer their dead bodies to be put in graves. And they that dwell upon the earth shall rejoice over them, and make merry, and shall send gifts one to another; because these two prophets tormented them that dwelt on the earth. And after three days and an half the Spirit of life from God entered into them, and they stood upon their feet; and great fear fell upon them which saw them. And they heard a great voice from heaven saying unto them, Come up hither. And they ascended up to heaven in a cloud; and their enemies beheld them. And the same hour was there a great earthquake, and the tenth part of the city fell, and in the earthquake were slain of men seven thousand; and the remnant were affrighted, and gave glory to the God of heaven. The second woe is past; and, behold, the third woe cometh quickly. And the seventh angel sounded; and there were great voices in heaven, saying, The kingdoms of this world are become the kingdoms of our Lord, and of his Christ; and he shall reign for ever and ever. And the four and twenty elders, which sat before God on their seats, fell upon their faces, and worshipped God, saying, We give thee thanks, O Lord God Almighty, which art, and wast, and art to come; because thou hast taken to thee thy great power, and hast reigned. And the nations were angry, and thy wrath is come, and the time of the dead, that they should be judged, and that thou shouldest give reward unto thy servants the prophets, and to the saints, and them that fear thy name, small and great; and shouldest destroy them which destroy the earth. And the temple of God was opened in heaven, and there was seen in his temple the ark of his testament: and there were lightnings, and voices, and thunderings, and an earthquake, and great hail.—Rev. xi.
We enter to-day upon what I venture to call the second part of the Apocalypse. I do not make that division in conformity with any theory of mine. The seer is told that when the seventh angel sounds the mystery of God will be finished, but that he must prophesy again before many kindreds, and tongues, and nations, and kings.
I have assumed that the prophet is speaking of Jerusalem. Six blasts have proclaimed that it is about to fall. It has not fallen yet. The vision before us speaks of a period of twelve hundred and sixty days, or forty-two months. We commonly reckon a period of about four years between the commencement of the Jewish rebellion, consequent upon the oppression of Florus, and the termination of the war by Titus. If I take this time, or a portion of it, to be indicated by the twelve hundred and sixty days, I shall at least be nearer to a strict interpretation than if I changed the days into years; less liable to be imposed upon by tricks of my fancy, than if I were obliged to guess which is the starting point and conclusion of those years in the history of Christendom. How that short interval was filled up, with what horrors in the whole empire, with what special and unspeakable horrors in the city of Jerusalem, I need not say. Since the confusion was general, the wild fanatics in the holy city might easily persuade themselves that the other city, the tyrant city, would fall first. The Capitol was burnt before the Temple was burnt. The outrages of Vitellius might draw down the Divine vengeance as much as the outrages of John or Simon. While the holy place stood there might always be some signal interposition to save it and destroy the besiegers, like that which had occurred when Sennacherib was invading it in the days of Hezekiah.
I. “And there was given me a reed, like unto a rod, and the angel stood, saying, Rise and measure the temple of God, and the altar, and them that worship therein. But the court that is without the temple, leave out and measure it not, for it is given unto the Gentiles: and the holy city shall they tread under foot forty and two months.”
The parallel here is obvious and direct. The prophecy of Ezekiel refers, more than any other, to the Temple. Its desecration by the idolatries of its worshippers; its coming ruin by the Babylonian power; the meaning of its symbols to those who dwelt amongst the idolaters of Chaldæa, doubtless had filled his soul. Then comes the prospect of restoration. In his fortieth chapter we hear how he is transported in spirit to the land of Israel, and how he “sees a man with a line of flax in his hand, and a measuring reed.” With these he measures all the parts of the city, and especially the different courts of the Temple. The prophet learns what that building is to be which he may not behold with his eyes, but in which his countrymen will one day worship the God of their fathers.
The command to St. John to come and measure must at once bring the vision of his predecessor before him. Is he, too, a prophet of restoration? Is the Temple to perish, and to rise again after seventy years? Is there to be a New Jerusalem in his day, such as there was after the captivity?
The rest of the Apocalypse is an answer, I believe, to these questions. This chapter introduces the period of 1260 days. It explains what is passing in them, and what they signify. It assumes them to be a period of utter darkness and desolation. But it shows that in that darkest time the old witnesses of God were not extinct; that even then they were doing the work which they had always done. The prophet will not scatter a delusion till he has given a substitute for it. All that is contained in city and Temple is doomed. No fire will come down from heaven to destroy the besiegers. The fall is delayed, but it is certain. But those also are not wrong who say that there is an immortality in it, and its altars, and its worshippers. That immortality will be made manifest by the very destruction which is impending. One who purged it of the traffickers that were defiling it, said, Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it again. When those who heard the words saw Him appearing out of the grave of Joseph, they knew that He spake of the temple of His body. That was one fulfilment of them; there could yet be another. The temple of stone was not to have one stone left upon another; but the work for which it existed, the work which it had already to do for the world, might be accomplished. A better resurrection than that which had cheered the soul of Ezekiel was approaching. What it was would be shown more and more clearly to the spirit of St. John. In the meantime, he was not to measure those courts which Ezekiel had measured; he was to leave them out; the desecration which they underwent in the 1260 days was a sign that the better days, the diviner polity, had no connexion with them.
II. “And I will give power unto my two witnesses, and they shall prophesy a thousand two hundred and three score days, clothed in sackcloth. These are the two olive trees, and the two candlesticks standing before the God of the earth. And if any man will hurt them, fire proceedeth out of their mouth, and devoureth their enemies; and if any man will hurt them, he must in this manner be killed. These have power to shut heaven, that it rain not in the days of their prophecy: and have power over waters to turn them to blood, and to smite them with all plagues as often as they will.”
Those who seek to discover what these two witnesses are, from extraneous sources, have an illimitable region for their fancy to work upon. I shall confine myself to the indications that are furnished by the passage itself and by those in the Old Testament to which it directs us.
The allusion here is to one of the prophets who saw the Temple rising out of its ruins, and cheered those who feared that their own weakness and the opposition of their enemies would never suffer it to be completed. The prophet Zechariah, in his third chapter, has had a vision of Joshua, the high priest of that day, standing before the angel of the Lord, and Satan standing at his right hand to resist him. “And the Lord said unto Satan, The Lord rebuke thee, O Satan; even the Lord that hath chosen Jerusalem, rebuke thee. Is not this a brand plucked out of the fire?” At first Joshua is clothed in filthy garments. These are taken from him. He is invested with the mitre and with the sacerdotal robes. All the dignity of his office is restored to him. Then in the fourth chapter we read, “And the angel that talked with me came again, and waked me as a man that is wakened out of his sleep, and said unto me, What seest thou? And I said, I have looked, and behold a candlestick all of gold, with a bowl upon the top of it, and his seven lamps thereon, and seven pipes to the seven lamps which are upon the top thereof, and two olive trees by it, one upon the right side of the bowl, and the other upon the left side thereof. So I answered and spake to the angel that talked with me, saying, What are these, my lord?” The answer is not what we expect. It is, “This is the word of the Lord unto Zerubbabel, saying, Not by might, nor by power, but by my Spirit, saith the Lord of hosts.” The prophet is then told that the hands of Zerubbabel which have laid the foundation of the house shall also finish it. When he repeats his inquiry about the olive trees, he is told, “These are the two anointed ones, that stand before the Lord of the whole earth.”
I believe, if we consider this passage, the very points in it which cause us difficulty, its apparent digressions and incoherencies, will help us to the meaning of the Apocalyptic witnesses. Joshua and Zerubbabel are evidently the priest and the judge of the city which is rising out of its ruins. Connected with these men, who represent the great offices of the commonwealth, is a vision of the Temple itself, in which Joshua is to minister, which Zerubbabel is to build. This vision is not of the outward and material building, but of two of its old symbols, which most represent its spiritual character and intent. In its highest grandeur, in its deepest depression, it has still been testifying of an everlasting Law proceeding from the invisible God of righteousness, of a uniting and living Communion between Him and His creatures. The Word that comes from His lips, the Spirit that goes forth to quicken the creatures whom He has made in His image, these anointed ones who stand continually before the God of the earth, are presented to men in the ordinances of Law and Sacrifice, in the persons of the Judge and the Priest. They had lasted from the earliest times: when Elijah, in the days of Ahab, was permitted to bear witness against the Baal worship by forbidding the heavens to send down rain during the days of his prophecy; when, centuries before that time, Moses had turned the waters of the Nile into blood, that Pharaoh might know the Lord of the earth to be the Deliverer of captives; they had been acting as these witnesses. They had been showing that Divine power did not dwell with that which looked powerful, but with that which looked weak. They, as much as Zerubbabel, had been establishing the maxim, “Not by might, nor by power, but by my Spirit.” And so it was now. The witnesses in the midst of Jerusalem were witnesses that a fire would come forth from the righteous God to sweep away the enemies of righteousness, whoever they were.
III. “And when they shall have finished their testimony, the beast that ascendeth out of the bottomless pit shall make war against them, and shall overcome them, and kill them. And their dead bodies shall lie in the street of the great city, which spiritually is called Sodom and Egypt, where also our Lord was crucified.”
A time, however, was to come when these witnesses for the existence of law and of God’s care for men should be silenced. I cannot tell whether there is an allusion to any particular event in the siege of Jerusalem, which signally denoted the extinction of the last fragment of moral restraint and of belief in that which is not evil. Probably there is. Probably the allusion would have been intelligible to some in that day who needed it. We do not need the specific fact, but the principle which was denoted by it. What concerns us, is to understand that there was a critical moment in the history of that falling city, as there is in the history of all falling cities, when its crimes reached their climax, when the hindrances that had been opposed to them ceased to work. The murderer of the witnesses is described here as the beast that ascendeth out of the bottomless pit. More will be told us of him hereafter. Enough is said here to indicate that mere brute force, ungoverned lust and self-will, became triumphant over all that opposed them. These were to all intents and purposes the lords of the Holy City. So much the Jewish historian would have told us. A seer was wanted, not to record or repeat the announcement, but to tell us what is implied in it. The witnesses that perished in Jerusalem were the witnesses of God’s government, of God’s mercy to the world. The slaying of those witnesses could not affect Jerusalem only; must affect all mankind.
IV. “And their dead bodies shall lie in the street of the great city, which spiritually is called Sodom and Egypt, where also our Lord was crucified. And they of the people and kindreds and tongues and nations, shall see their dead bodies three days and an half, and shall not suffer their dead bodies to be put in graves.”
In the first of these verses, the place in which these witnesses dwelt, is identified as the place in which our Lord was crucified. Jerusalem is not more clearly denoted by that description than by the other, that it is spiritually called Sodom and Egypt. What city, during the year of its siege, more fulfilled the idea of a Sodom, in which all law and all humanity were obliterated—of an Egypt, in which religion had become the great instrument of darkness and oppression, the denial of God, the stimulus to every crime? When the dead bodies of the witnesses are said to lie in the street of this city, it is intimated, I conceive, that there was the most conspicuous example ever furnished of the decay and putrefaction of institutions, that had been set to diffuse life through the nations. When it is said that the people, and kindreds, and tongues, and nations, would not suffer them to be buried, it is intimated that the heathen round about preferred that Jerusalem should remain a sink of filth and iniquity, a spectacle of what had been the end of its grand profession of a peculiar worship, than that it should at once be swept away from the earth. For a little while, not much longer than that time during which the Son of God Himself remained under the power of death and the grave, the city of Jerusalem—so men decreed, so God willed—was to be a sign and witness of the evil that is possible upon the earth, which is only possible when it is the corruption of the highest good.
V. “And they that dwell upon the earth shall rejoice: and make merry, and shall send gifts one to another; because these two prophets tormented them that dwelt upon the earth.” A sense of liberation from the restraints of law, from the belief of anything invisible, is set forth very livingly in these words. It has come to different nations in different periods; always, I believe, has been the effect of the demoralisation and degradation of some society which had high trusts, and had sunk through its boasting to a lower level than those whom it pretended to warn and to guide. That there should be this savage glee and mutual self-congratulation in idolaters who had been tormented by the witnesses which the Jewish law and worship bore against their impurities, and that an actual loosening of all moral ties such as had not been known before should have been connected with this feeling, we might well conjecture, if we had not information from the most trustworthy sources of the actual shaking of Roman society in the time after the death of Nero.
VI. “And after three days and an half, the Spirit of life from God entered into them, and they stood upon their feet; and great fear fell upon them which saw them. And they heard a great voice from heaven saying unto them, Come up hither. And they ascended up to heaven in a cloud; and their enemies beheld them. And the same hour there was a great earthquake, and the tenth part of the city fell, and in the earthquake were slain of men seven thousand: and the remnant were affrighted, and gave glory to the God of heaven.” Here we have a key to the subject of the whole vision. Forms and institutions which were not only time-honoured, but which could claim a Divine origin, which had been upholden by the Divine might, wither and perish. The world thinks they are to perish for ever. That is the moment of their transfiguration and glorification. Then they are discovered to bear a life which is dependent upon no accidents of time and place.
All things above and below express their presence, testify of their authority. The fears which strike the consciences of those who had defied them most, are the signs of that presence and that authority. The rapid disappearance of some power which had asserted its independence of them; the confessions, conscious and unconscious, of a God of heaven, which follow a period of utter indifference and unbelief; these shew that the witnesses have ascended. If they lose their local habitation and name, it is that they may claim a universal predominance.
The truth of the words has been illustrated at various periods; no wonder that one and another has claimed them for itself. I believe we vindicate them for all, by accepting them as directly referring to that crisis of which I have spoken. That the Roman world, after being shaken from its centre to its circumference, was struck with a great fear; that when Vespasian ascended the throne, it did again accept a righteous and orderly government, or, as the prophet expresses it, did homage to the God of heaven; that there was no similar revival, but a wilder fury, a more utter brutality among those who professed to do homage to the God of heaven in the holy city; that the very restoration of order in Rome was therefore the signal for the doom of Jerusalem, we learn from history; this I apprehend is what the prophet means when he says, “The second woe is past, and, behold, the third woe cometh quickly.” The great earthquake of Rome is over; the restorer and deliverer of that city is the predestined destroyer of this. For now,
VII. “The seventh angel soundeth.” That the fall of the Temple follows immediately the blast of the trumpet, I gather not only from all that has preceded in this chapter, but from the last verse of it. “And the temple of God was opened in heaven, and there was seen in his temple the ark of his testament; and there were lightnings, and voices, and thunderings, and an earthquake, and great hail.” The temple in heaven is the background to the picture of that great fire which is consuming the temple on earth. The ark and the covenant are seen to be there; the lightnings and thunderings which shatter the one, discover the other. And so it comes to pass that what appeared the most awful of all calamities is thus celebrated: “And there were great voices in heaven, saying, The kingdoms of this world are become the kingdoms of our Lord, and of his Christ; and he shall reign for ever and ever.” As I spoke last Sunday of “the finishing of the mystery of God,” which we are promised “in the days of the voice of the seventh angel, when he shall begin to sound,” I need not dwell long on these words, because, wonderful as they are, they are the necessary sequel to that commencement. If the temple on Mount Moriah testified of a Lord God of Israel whom no man had seen or could see, of an anointed king who should reign over the house of David, and of whose kingdom there should be no end; the fall of that temple either proved that testimony to be false, or declared that the Lord God of Israel was the Lord God of all the nations of the earth, that the Son of David was the King of men. In terms, all Christians admit that the passing away of the Jewish polity involved this proclamation. There are hymns which are taught to English children about God now calling the world His own, and about heathens tasting His grace. But we have come to regard these as merely rhetorical phrases. We say that in a sense it is no doubt true that God reigns over the nations; meaning that in every practical and important sense it is not true. Therefore when we hear of voices in heaven solemnly declaring that the kingdoms of this world are the kingdoms of God and His Christ, we naturally say that they must refer to some quite different event from the fall of Jerusalem, to some period that we have never reached. For we have a reasonable confidence that in the language of heaven there are no rhetorical phrases; that its hymns celebrate real and not fictitious blessings. It would indeed be daring profaneness to confound our idle talk about the world being God’s world with that ascription of which St. John speaks in the sixteenth verse.
VIII. “And the four and twenty elders, which sat before God on their seats, fell upon their faces, and worshipped God, saying, We give thee thanks, O Lord God Almighty, which art, and wast, and art to come; because thou hast taken to thee thy great power and hast reigned.” But would it be profaneness if we supposed them to understand the vital significance of events which we have emptied of their significance? Would it be profaneness to confess that we have been utterly unthankful for that which ought to have filled us with wonder and gratitude? Would it be profaneness to inquire whether the Apostles had any message to deliver to the world at all—whether we have any—if the message is not this, that the kingdoms of the world do belong to God and to His Christ, and not to the tyrants who have claimed them, not to the devil or his angels?
IX. At all events I believe we shall find that this and no other is the doctrine of the Apocalypse, the one which forces itself upon us more and more in each vision that follows this of the overthrow of the holy city and Temple. If the visions were all brilliant and joyful, we might indeed have good ground for concluding that they had nothing to do with the last eighteen hundred years of the world, or with our day. But they are pictures of fierce conflict. The news that God has taken His great power, and is reigning, which awakes such joy in heavens, finds only little faith in earth. “The nations,” it is said, “were angry.” They did not like to be told of a righteous Judge. They were not eager to confess One who cared for the poor and the outcast, or who had taken their nature, and had died their death. The government of God and His Christ were too utterly unlike their own that they should wish to be under it. But it is added, “Thy wrath is come.” Their wish could not interfere with the fact. They were angry because they felt there was a power over them with which they were not in harmony, and which would prevail against them. And this power the prophet goes on to tell us is felt in the world of the dead, as well as of the quick. Being the power of Him who was and is and is to come, being the power of the Lamb which was slain, who lives for ever and ever, it cannot be fixed by mortal boundaries; it cannot be limited by the sleep that rounds our year.
X. “It was the time of the dead, that they should be judged, and that thou shouldest give reward unto thy servants the prophets, and to the saints, and to them that fear thy name, both small and great.” I take the words as I find them; they may shatter some notions and theories of ours; they may open to us visions of judgment which are different from those which we have inherited or have fashioned for ourselves. But if they are revelations of God, we must not shrink from them. We may be sure that they will deepen and expand our faith, not shake it; that they will not lessen our awe, but make it more habitual and more effectual; that if they forbid any thoughts of God which are inconsistent with a belief in His perfect love, in His full redemption, they will not allow us to impute to Him or to cherish ourselves any the slightest tolerance for evil. The time is come that thou “shouldest destroy them that destroy the earth.” This was a cause for the exultation of the elders when the earthly temple fell, when the heavenly temple was opened; this must reconcile us to the fall of even that which is dearest and most hallowed in our eyes—which has been dearest and most hallowed in God’s eyes—if it ceases to be a witness for Him, if it hides the ark of His testament from men.