(PREACHED ON WHITSUNDAY.)
And I looked, and, lo, a Lamb stood on the Mount Sion, and with him an hundred forty and four thousand, having his Father’s name written in their foreheads. And I heard a voice from heaven, as the voice of many waters, and as the voice of a great thunder: and I heard the voice of harpers harping with their harps: and they sung as it were a new song before the throne, and before the four beasts, and the elders: and no man could learn that song but the hundred and forty and four thousand which were redeemed from the earth. These are they which were not defiled with women; for they are virgins. These are they which follow the Lamb whithersoever he goeth. These were redeemed from among men, being the firstfruits unto God and to the Lamb. And in their mouth was found no guile: for they are without fault before the throne of God. And I saw another angel fly in the midst of heaven, having the everlasting gospel to preach unto them that dwell on the earth, and to every nation, and kindred, and tongue, and people, saying with a loud voice, Fear God, and give glory to him; for the hour of his judgment is come: and worship him that made heaven, and earth, and the sea, and the fountains of waters. And there followed another angel, saying, Babylon is fallen, is fallen, that great city, because she made all nations drink of the wine of the wrath of her fornication. And the third angel followed them, saying with a loud voice, If any man worship the beast and his image, and receive his mark in his forehead, or in his hand, the same shall drink of the wine of the wrath of God, which is poured out without mixture into the cup of his indignation; and he shall be tormented with fire and brimstone in the presence of the holy angels, and in the presence of the Lamb: and the smoke of their torment ascendeth up for ever and ever: and they have no rest day nor night, who worship the beast and his image, and whosoever receiveth the mark of his name. Here is the patience of the saints: here are they that keep the commandments of God, and the faith of Jesus. And I heard a voice from heaven saying unto me, Write, Blessed are the dead which die in the Lord from henceforth: Yea, saith the Spirit, that they may rest from their labours; and their works do follow them.—Rev. xiv. 1-14.
I. This vision recalls the one in the seventh chapter. When the angels were going forth with their trumpets to prepare for the fall of the accursed city, another angel was seen sealing twelve thousand of every tribe of Israel with the seal of the living God. The names of the tribes which were so carefully and formally enumerated there, do not appear again here. But the total number of the sealed is the same. The place Mount Sion connects them with the chosen people. There are, however, two new circumstances: these one hundred and forty-four thousand are about the Lamb, and they are signed with their Father’s name. I would especially call your attention to the resemblance between these visions, and to the difference between them, on this day. Whitsuntide, it seems to me, throws a clear light upon the whole subject, and in turn receives a light from the Apocalypse.
(1.) The Feast of Pentecost was strictly a Jewish feast, though it was a thanksgiving for the gifts of the common earth. Those who came to it recognised Jerusalem as their centre. The Apostles at this Pentecost spoke to them of a Son of David, and of David himself. The wonder which struck all ears and hearts, was that Galileans should be able to hold converse with Jews dwelling in all the different heathen cities, respecting the works of the God of Abraham. Those who received the Spirit felt that they were no longer a divided people, scattered among the heathen, but a family which no separation of place could put asunder. They were indeed children of Abraham, because they were children of God. Though they might be only a remnant of Israel, though the majority of their countrymen might continue to call Him whom they reverenced as a Divine King a malefactor and blasphemer, they represented a united Israel. The nation which the sects were destroying lived in them.
(2.) And yet the ascended King was shewn to be the King of the Jews, because He had conquered the death which held all men captive, because He could not stay in one earthly dwelling-place. He must then be the King of men. However slow the Apostles might be in learning that they were to proclaim Him in that character, however important it was that there should be a period during which they were realising their position as Jews, and shewing their countrymen what was implied in that position, it was inevitable that events would break down the barriers which they could not break down. Their fellowship was essentially a human fellowship.
(3.) It was human because it was Divine. Before Christ left them He had said, “I ascend to my Father and your Father; to my God and your God.”And now He sent them the promise of this Father. That promise He had Himself interpreted to be the gift of another Comforter, who should abide with them for ever, a Spirit of Truth; One who should teach them of Him and of His Father. The new name with which they were sealed was a name which Gentiles, as much as Jews, had been feeling after. The awful words, “The Lord thy God is One Lord,” seemed to put all those who had been associating human thoughts and feelings with God, at an immeasurable distance. Now, when the highest manifestation of the glory of God was in One who had taken flesh and become man; now, when a Spirit had been given who could teach them most to magnify God by most magnifying His image; now the hope of the Greek might be fulfilled as much as that of the Israelite: the kingdom of heaven could embrace both. The unity of God repelled none, attracted all.
(4.) These sealed members of the different tribes are now gathered on Mount Sion, around the Lamb. The place indicates that they represent the continuity of the Jewish family. But the Lamb who bore the sins of the world indicates that they are no longer members of tribes, that their centre is no longer in Jerusalem. The insect has passed through its stages of egg, and caterpillar, and chrysalis. It has become winged. It can soar to heaven, or light upon any leaf or flower of earth. The chosen nation has expanded into the Church of the universe. It is a witness that men are not fatherless, are not servants of a beast. It declares them to be redeemed and united in a living and glorified Head.
Perhaps you say that the next words contradict this assertion. Let us consider them.
II. “And I heard a voice from heaven, as the voice of many waters, and as the voice of a great thunder: and I heard the voice of harpers harping with their harps: and they sung as it were a new song before the throne, and before the four beasts, and before the elders; and no man could learn that song but the hundred and forty and four thousand which were redeemed from the earth. These are they which were not defiled with women; for they are virgins. These are they which follow the Lamb whithersoever he goeth. These were redeemed from among men, being the firstfruits to God and the Lamb. And in their mouth was found no guile: for they are without fault before the throne of God.”
Now I shall be told that nothing here is said about a redemption of the world; much about a redemption from the world. These followers of the Lamb stand out in broad contrast to all by whom they are surrounded. Their great blessing is that the habits of the world are not their habits. Their song cannot be learnt or understood by any but themselves. The world is lying in wickedness, worshipping a beast and his image; they are faultless.
These remarks are obvious and true. What inferences should be deduced from them? Many have been deduced. “Christians are redeemed from the earth. What can that signify, but that the earth is a vile, unclean thing, with which they have nothing to do? The habits of Christians are not to be the habits of the world. What can that signify but that they should keep themselves as much as possible to themselves, that they should preserve the purity and virginity of their souls by not mixing with those who are corrupted? They have songs of their own; what can that signify but that God has given them an inheritance from which men generally are shut out?” In later times these conclusions have appeared to many religious men so inevitable, that in all countries of Christendom, Protestant as well as Romish, they have been made the groundwork of different systems of action; one sect or one order after another has arisen to proclaim them, to denounce former orders and sects for neglecting them, to illustrate them in their own practice.
To the Christian society shortly after the day of Pentecost, maxims very unlike these presented themselves as inevitable, and became the foundation of their conduct. One of the first records of their life is this, that they ate their meat with joy and singleness of heart. This was a new thing to them. Part of the song they had learnt was a thanksgiving for the earth and its gifts, which they had before received with dulness and indifference. But was not separation from other men and suspicion of other men characteristic of them after they had received their baptism? If it had been, that would have been no special distinction from the world in which they had dwelt. Each of the Jewish sects cultivated this separation, cherished this suspicion; the most popular sect acquired its religious reputation by the distance at which it kept those who did not accept its decrees. The Christians would at once have been recognised as proving their title to be a Nazarene sect, if they had followed this precedent. They could not follow it, because the principle of their profession was that they should follow the Lamb whithersoever He went. He had not gone in this direction at all. He had solemnly taken another course. He had incurred the wrath of the Pharisees by eschewing what seemed to them incontrovertible dogmas respecting the treatment of their fellowcreatures—by going to sinners and eating with them. If His disciples, after His ascension, were to purge themselves from the old leaven, the leaven of the Pharisees and the Sadducees, they must above all things seek to purge themselves of the leaven of exclusiveness; no ingredient had adulterated the pure Paschal bread so much as that.
But if they got rid of this leaven, how could they become a pure lump wholly consecrated to God? Only while they confessed that in themselves individually dwelt no good thing—nothing which could raise them above the lowest publican or harlot or heathen in the world; only while they confessed that all their purity was in that Lamb who had taken them into fellowship with Himself, and had written His Father’s name on their foreheads; only while they confessed that in Him God looked upon them as faultless, utterly undefiled; that fault and corruption began when they forgot their relation to Him, when they separated themselves from each other, when they pursued separate ways and interests of their own. What, then, was their redemption from among men? The redemption from their self-interests, from their self-worship; the privilege of confessing the Son of Man who had redeemed them and all mankind; the privilege of belonging in very deed to a human kind; not of being, like the worshippers of the beast, utterly inhuman. I would not change one word or letter of this passage. I demand that it should be construed in the most strict way in which it can be construed. I demand that the feeble subterfuges and evasions which would make “faultless” an equivalent for “not very faulty,”—“undefiled,” for “pure so far as is compatible with human infirmity”—should be dismissed as irreverent and dishonest. And then I am sure this passage will be the reconciliation of a multitude of others in which readers discover an opposition, using one to qualify the other till both become equally empty of meaning; I am sure it will be seen that the more Christians are free from the corruptions of their age, the less will they dare to limit the grace of God; that the more they regard themselves as firstfruits to God and the Lamb, the more will they believe the universe has been offered and sacrificed to God in its High Priest, and that He will assert His right to it, let who will dispute that right.
This then, I believe, is the subject of that song which began in heaven, and was echoed upon earth, which was sung before the throne, and before the four beasts, and the elders; which was “as it were new;” not actually new, not without preludes in former days, not different in spirit from any of those which had risen from the hearts and lips of old prophets when they were glorifying God under the tyranny of some brute power, and amid the sins and degeneracy of their countrymen; but new, inasmuch as it was the fulfilment of all these older songs; new, inasmuch as it celebrated the actual atonement of heaven and earth which they had only anticipated; new, inasmuch as the brute power of this day was more distinctly and formally antichristian than any of those could be which had preceded the Incarnation.
III. “And I saw another angel fly in the midst of heaven, having the everlasting Gospel to preach unto them that dwell on the earth, and to every nation, and kindred, and tongue, and people; saying with a loud voice, Fear God, and give glory to him; for the hour of his judgment is come; and worship him that made heaven and earth and the sea and the fountains of waters.” This and the other messages which follow, are strictly messages from heaven to earth. The first implicitly contains the rest. It is called an everlasting Gospel; good news concerning an everlasting God; good news to all His creatures everywhere. It is that Gospel which Saul of Tarsus, the Hebrew of the Hebrews, bore to the idolaters of Greece and Asia, and felt in bearing it that he was strictly fulfilling his functions as a child of Abraham. The Jew lifted up his voice and said to the world, “You who have been worshipping things in heaven, and earth, and in the sea, and in the fountains of waters, you who have been bowing to gods in nature and of nature, you who have been making gods in your own image, in the likeness of your good and evil desires, of your just and unjust notions, of your pure and lustful impulses; fear the God who has made all things in heaven, and earth, and the sea; fear Him who has made man in His own image; for He has revealed His true image to men; He has revealed the standard of righteousness; the Judge who condemns all unrighteousness; the Redeemer from all unrighteousness.” Do you think it is not a Gospel because it begins with the word “Fear,” or because it speaks of judgment? I believe no Gospel can satisfy men except this. They want to know whom they should fear. They must fear an evil being if they do not fear a good Being. They cannot trust one whom they do not reverence. Take away awe, and He whom you worship shrinks again to your own dimensions. The misery of men had been that they had made a God in their own likeness. To have Him revealed to them as infinitely above them, as stooping to them, was the overthrow of the superstition that had made them cowards and slaves. And the deliverance would be utterly incomplete if they might not believe that this righteous God was their Judge, the Judge of the whole earth, and that they might take refuge in Him from the false judgments of all men, and most chiefly from their own, and from themselves.
IV. “And there followed another angel, saying, Babylon is fallen, is fallen, that great city, because she made all nations drink of the wine of the wrath of her fornications.”
The Babel or Babylonian polity was contradictory of the Israelite polity. The ruler stood in no relation to his people; he was a ruler merely. The gods to whom he did homage were powers, different and discordant powers; they were to be worshipped and propitiated as the supporters of his government; they cared nothing for those who worshipped and propitiated them. The God of Israel was declared to be the King and Husband of His people. The kings who reigned in His name were to care for the people as a husband cares for his wife. When the nation fell, as it was continually falling, into idolatry, this was said to be an act of fornication or adultery, the wife revolting from her real Lord. That language was applicable to the chosen people. It could now be applied to the world at large. The Angel proclaims that it does not now belong to the world. The Husband of the race has appeared; all idolatry is fornication or adultery. Men can be told that they are spiritual beings, united to a spiritual Lord, and that in giving themselves to fleshly and visible things they are forsaking their lawful state; they are yielding themselves to seducers. This was involved in the revelation of the Son of Man. And therefore there was involved in it the downfall of the system of idolatry—of the whole Babel polity. Widely as it had spread, mighty and subtle as were its influences over every tribe and nation—the day when the Man-child was born, when the true Head of man, the true bond between heaven and earth was discovered, that was the day of its doom. Already, in the Roman empire, there were signs how the system was cracking and falling to pieces. It could not sustain the tyranny which depended upon it; the tyranny could not sustain it. The cry, “It is fallen! it is fallen!” would be illustrated in that very age by the convulsion which was shaking earth and heaven, the seat of the empire and the seats of the gods. And the proclamation was not weaker but stronger, because in that convulsion the city which had borne witness against the Babel idolatry was itself to perish. For it had admitted the Babel principle into its very heart. Jerusalem had become emphatically the city of confusion. It had aspired to make for itself a name, and had forgotten the name of its God. It had thought that its towers were high and reached to heaven; but they were built of brick instead of stone; they were cemented with slime instead of mortar. The jabber of its sects showed that God had come down to confound its pride. It had no tongue which was intelligible to itself; how could it render itself intelligible to the world? The Church which the Spirit had entrusted with power to speak to men of different tribes, in their own tongues, of the wonderful works of God, could not but see that the fall of Jerusalem was one sign among many that the thrones of all false gods were to be cast down:
“They feel from Juda’s land
The dreaded Infant’s hand,
The rays of Bethlehem blind their dusky eyen.”
And this because that Infant came not to destroy, but to fulfil; to gather into one all the scattered beliefs and hopes of the world; to overthrow its lies by justifying its truths. We must not confound this voice with that which follows it, intimately as they are connected. The Babel society, considered in itself, is based upon the worship of a number of persons. But these are always aiming at a mock unity. The beast, which was described in the last chapter, is that concentration of what is brutal in the others, that exclusion of what is human.
V. “And the third angel followed, saying with a loud voice, If any man worship the beast and his image, and receive his mark in his forehead or in his hand, the same shall drink of the wine of the wrath of God, which is poured out without mixture into the cup of his indignation; and he shall be tormented with fire and brimstone in the presence of the holy angels, and in the presence of the Lamb: and the smoke of their torment ascendeth up for ever and ever: and they have no rest day nor night, who worship the beast and his image, and whosoever receiveth the mark of his name.”
The voice of the angel sings utter perdition, torment, perpetual restlessness to those who carry in their hearts the image of the beast. Why? Because the eternal God has manifested His image to men, has claimed them as formed in that image; has promised His Spirit to write His name on their hearts. The worship of the beast is the degradation of spiritual beings into beasts, a degradation which involves an anguish that only spirits can know; a sense of something lost; endless discontent with that which has been exchanged for it; the undying worm of the conscience; the envy and hatred possessing and governing creatures formed for fellowship and love. Some dream of this misery may be traced in the lamentations of the companions of Ulysses when they had tasted the cup of Circe, and had been transformed by her wand. The feeling of the exile will be always saddest in proportion to the beauty of the home from which he has wandered. The intellectual Greek had a perception of the meanness of swinish existence, which the savage could not have. It is inevitable, therefore, that the vision of a God of eternal goodness and loving-kindness which the Gospel presents should make the hell of solitude and selfishness profoundly and inconceivably dark. Such expressions as these, “the wine of the wrath of God, which is poured out without measure;” “tormented with fire and brimstone in the presence of the holy angels and of the Lamb;” “the smoke of their torment ascendeth up for ever and ever;” “they have no rest day nor night;” may easily become mere figures of speech which the orator plays with at his pleasure; which frighten the nerves for half an hour; which fret but do not rouse the conscience; which are expected and demanded by the lazy hearers as sounds that relieve the monotony of an ordinary discourse. For the Gospel of such an orator is not a Gospel of God; but a Gospel about the way in which men may be delivered from God. He has no message concerning a kingdom of light which the incarnation and death of the Son of God has opened to mankind; therefore his message concerning the kingdom of darkness speaks to nothing in the hearts and spirits of men; only tingles or rattles in their ears. This angel’s voice is charged with real thunder because it is essentially sweet and Divine. If the love of God were contracted in the very least degree, the horror of separation from that love, of devotion to lust and hatred, must be contracted in the same degree. If the power of the Divine love to raise men out of that abyss of horror were reduced by any time measures, the sense of what is implied in spiritual and eternal death, the dread of it, the force of those divinely chosen images which denote it, must be reduced by the same measures. In easy times the Opposition may not be very apparent; the Divine words and their counterfeits may be often exchanged for each other, and be taken to have the same value. In such times as those of which St. John speaks, when the beast’s power and the Lamb’s power are meeting each other face to face; when every one has to choose between them; when all apparent strength is on the side of evil; then do the words of the angel which proclaim that it is not omnipotent but utterly accursed come forth in their clearness and might. The beast with the lamblike countenance, whose business is to stamp the image of the beast with the dragon’s horns on the hearts of men, may mingle eternal and temporal terrors in wild confusion, so crushing more effectually than in any other way the spirits of men under his ignominious yoke. The messenger of God knows in that day that he is to set forth, in straight and broad words, the spiritual and eternal perdition which is involved in the service of a false and cruel power, if so he may turn men to the Conqueror of that power; if so he may convince them that the Redeemer is stronger than the destroyer, and that there are no chains that the one can forge which the other cannot break.
VI. The words that follow are familiar to us out of their context. It is important that we should know them in their context.
“Here is the patience of the saints: here are they that keep the commandments of God, and the faith of Jesus. And I heard a voice from heaven saying unto me, Write, Blessed are the dead which die in the Lord from henceforth: Yea, saith the Spirit, that they may rest from their labours; and their works do follow them.”
What has the patience of the saints to do with that announcement respecting the worshippers of the beast which we heard just now? My brethren! to believe that the devil is not the lord of the world, that he cannot give the kingdoms of it to whom he will, is hard at all times, intensely hard in those times when evil and brute power has established its ascendancy, and the world is crying after it. Then it seems but the confession of an obvious fact to admit this dominion of the enemy of man. Nay, it will be asserted by some as a pious duty to hold this faith. “Christ is to reign hereafter; but at present the earth is given up to the dragon.” I deem it impossible, while we think this, that we should not do some homage—yes, continual homage—to that power which we suppose is uppermost. And therefore this book teaches the deep and all-important lesson that the patience of the saints consists in believing steadfastly that message of the angel concerning the beast, and in not believing any whispers and suggestions of his respecting his authority. So doing they keep the commandment, which has said, “Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou serve.” So doing they tread the path of Jesus, who did with this commandment resist the adversary when he said, “All these will I give thee, and the glory of them, if thou wilt fall down and worship me.” He knew that to admit that lie—to confess that these kingdoms were in the hands of the evil one—was to fall down and worship him. He wanted no other homage. Christ might have the kingdoms hereafter, if He would grant them to be Satan’s at that moment. He said, “Get thee behind me.” In His strength every one of His followers, in the darkest hour, when good appears most utterly defeated, is to say the same. And to strengthen them to this effort, there comes another heavenly voice, saying, “Blessed are the dead that die in the Lord from henceforth.” Why from henceforth? Were not the dead always blessed which died in the Lord? If the words had a special reference to that time, may we dare to use them in our funeral service for any brother or sister, whose remains we commit to the earth now? I think the words did belong to that time; I think from henceforth had a sound of special comfort for those, who, if they judged by the sight of their eyes, must have concluded that the earth was not the Lord’s. It reminded them that the earth is but part of the universe; that threescore years and ten do not settle the great questions which are debated here; that the Lord, who has gone into the grave and hell, has ascended on high, that He may open eternity to men. The voice says to those who are sinking under the spectacle which the world offers to them, “Yes! but now at this very moment men are passing into a region where the mists that obstruct our vision here do not dwell; where they shall know that not the beast, but the Lord God Omnipotent reigneth.” And so the words became retrospective and prospective likewise. “Know from henceforth that they who fell asleep before Christ came in the flesh, are about His throne. Know from henceforth that you are in the midst of an innumerable company of every kindred and nation, who are watching your fight, and helping you in it. Know henceforth that that company will gather fresh members from all the ages that are to come—in lands unknown to you will men that are trembling at the thought of death, learn to sink their own deaths in His who died for the world. Remember, henceforth, that the hard labours which you or they may undergo in fighting with the beast in yourselves or in the world, are leading assuredly to a rest in God. Know from henceforth, that if you or they leave works which God has set you to do in this earth, poor and incomplete, these works will follow you, when you have passed through the veil. Know from henceforth, that whatever is begun, will be brought to its perfection; that new spheres of blessed toil will be opened to God’s servants; that as they followed the Lamb under the pressure of mortality, they will follow Him now to fresh victories, till every enemy which has opposed Him, and tormented His creatures, shall be put under His feet.”