And after these things I heard a great voice of much people in heaven, saying, Alleluia; Salvation, and glory, and honour, and power, unto the Lord our God: for true and righteous are his judgments: for he hath judged the great whore, which did corrupt the earth with her fornication, and hath avenged the blood of his servants at her hand. And again they said, Alleluia. And the smoke rose up for ever and ever. And the four and twenty elders and the four beasts fell down and worshipped God that sat on the throne, saying, Amen; Alleluia. And a voice came out of the throne, saying, Praise our God, all ye his servants, and ye that fear him, both small and great. And I heard as it were the voice of a great multitude, and as the voice of many waters, and as the voice of mighty thunderings, saying, Alleluia: for the Lord God Omnipotent reigneth. Let us be glad and rejoice, and give honour to him: for the marriage of the Lamb is come, and his wife hath made herself ready. And to her was granted that she should be arrayed in fine linen, clean and white: for the fine linen is the righteousness of saints. And he saith unto me, Write, Blessed are they which are called unto the marriage supper of the Lamb. And he saith unto me, These are the true sayings of God. And I fell at his feet to worship him. And he said unto me, See thou do it not: I am thy fellow-servant, and of thy brethren that have the testimony of Jesus: worship God: for the testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy. And I saw heaven open, and behold a white horse; and he that sat upon him was called Faithful and True, and in righteousness he doth judge and make war. His eyes were as a flame of fire, and on his head were many crowns; and he had a name written, that no man knew, but he himself. And he was clothed with a vesture dipped in blood: and his name is called The Word of God. And the armies which were in heaven followed him upon white horses, clothed in fine linen, white and clean. And out of his mouth goeth a sharp sword, that with it he should smite the nations: and he shall rule them with a rod of iron: and he treadeth the winepress of the fierceness of the wrath of Almighty God. And he hath on his vesture and on his thigh a name written, KING OF KINGS, AND LORD OF LORDS. And I saw an angel standing in the sun; and he cried with a loud voice, saying to all the fowls that fly in the midst of heaven, Come and gather yourselves together unto the supper of the great God; that ye may eat the flesh of kings, and the flesh of captains, and the flesh of mighty men, and the flesh of horses, and of them that sit on them, and the flesh of all men, both free and bond, both small and great. And I saw the beast, and the kings of the earth, and their armies, gathered together to make war against him that sat on the horse, and against his army. And the beast was taken, and with him the false prophet that wrought miracles before him, with which he deceived them that had received the mark of the beast, and them that worshipped his image. These both were cast alive into a lake of fire burning with brimstone. And the remnant were slain with the sword of him that sat upon the horse, which sword proceeded out of his mouth: and all the fowls were filled with their flesh.—Rev. xix.
“We praise God for His mercies, we pray to avert His judgments.” This is the doctrine which is commonly accepted even by religious men. It clashes strangely with the language of this book. The shouts of praise in heaven, which are echoed by saints on earth, are for God’s judgments. So we have found it before; nowhere is the lesson more emphatically taught than in the opening of this chapter.
I. “And after these things I heard a great voice of much people in heaven, saying, Alleluia; Salvation, and glory, and honour, and power, unto the Lord our God: for true and righteous are his judgments: for he hath judged the great whore, which did corrupt the earth with her fornication, and hath avenged the blood of his servants at her hand. And again they said, Alleluia. And her smoke rose up for ever and ever. And the four and twenty elders and the four beasts fell down and worshipped God that sat on the throne, saying, Amen; Alleluia. And a voice came out of the throne, saying, Praise our God, all ye his servants, and ye that fear him, both small and great.”
Are the thoughts of heaven and earth, then, wholly opposed on this subject? Do the four and twenty elders and the four living creatures who are about the throne rejoice in that which makes mortals weep? Do they give thanks and praise that the prayers of mortals have not been answered? that God has executed His vengeance in spite of their efforts to arrest it?
Certain expressions in this passage may make us pause before we adopt this mournful conclusion. One occurs in the first verse; Salvation is ascribed unto the Lord our God. Now salvation, in some sense or other, is certainly that for which all men everywhere are praying. If we ask that we may not be visited with a plague of rain and waters which might hinder us from receiving the fruits of the earth, we ask salvation from that plague; if we cry against battle and murder, and sudden death, against privy conspiracy or rebellion, we ask salvation from those dangers; if we pray against pride, malice, hypocrisy, and all uncharitableness, against fornication, against heresy, and schism, and contempt of God’s word and commandment, we ask salvation from those evils. It would not seem as if the heavenly hosts were celebrating the defeat of some petitions which had ascended from the earth. If they praise God for His judgments, they connect those judgments with deliverance.
The second verse will explain the first. “He hath judged the great whore, which did corrupt the earth with her fornication, and hath avenged the blood of his servants at her hand.” The salvation is from something which has defiled the earth, and made it miserable, and filled it with blood. With all delight they beheld the smoke of that fire which has consumed the earth’s tormentors and destroyers, ascending for ever and ever. Not for one age, but for every age, has that fire been kindled; the smoke ascends from each as a pledge and promise for the next. Therefore, the fifth verse breaks down the barrier between those who are in the visible and those who are in the invisible world. All those who fear God, both small and great, are asked to join in beholding the judgment—all are called to praise for it.
Yet though the Apostle does not represent heaven and earth as at variance, but as most truly at one, we ought not to forget that there must be a variance somewhere. And since all our thoughts, wishes, and prayers, cannot but be affected by it, let us not shrink from pressing the inquiry, Where is it? How does it happen that we talk of praying against that which the wisest and holiest appear to pray for? How is it that we dread the result for which they long—in which, when they behold it, they exult?
Supposing I believe that I am in a system which I am to call generally or universally good, though I am conscious that there is much in it which I hate, which torments me, crushes me, devours the life that is in me—I, of course, do not pray, and cannot. The author of that system—if it has an author—has, I presume, made it as he thinks fit. I have nothing to do with it, but to endure it as well as I can; and my endurance will be mixed with a number of curses which break forth from my inmost soul, since its misery can find no other vent. These curses will be directed against the system, suppose I regard it merely as such; they will be directed against him who set it in motion, if I think there is such a one. And no possible arguments to prove the folly or hopelessness of my rebellion against a state of things to which I am tied and bound, no amount of statistics to shew that things do take a certain course—or even that, after cycles of years, all turns out for the good of the whole—will avail to produce more than the affectation of contentment in me so long as I retain the feelings and necessities of a human being. The only resource one has, is to drown these feelings and necessities. In animal indulgence, in the torpor of a merely sensual existence, a man may learn to submit; otherwise, he will dash his head against the bars of his prison, let him dream ever so little of escape from it.
How do men rise out of the mire into which they are daily sinking more and more deeply? All would say, Not by acquiescence, but by protest. They affirm that mire is not the element in which human beings were meant to live. Though a hundred wish to abide in it, one or two continue to affirm for themselves, and for the rest, that that is not their state; if they can see no other, they can see there must be another. This protest and affirmation become prayer. They believe that somehow, or somewhere, they have a deliverer. If some one has consigned them to this misery, some other must be able to effect their salvation out of it. The desire to fly from it has been put into their mind; the effort to fly has been put into their minds. Whatever be the name of the Deliverer—in whatever region, near or distant, He may dwell—these inspirations have come from Him; He will second them. They ask him to save them from the oppressor—they ask him, if he is mighty enough, to judge between the oppressor and them. Whether the Author of the universe is the Oppressor or the Deliverer, the Enemy from whom men have to escape, or the Friend in whom they may rest the burden of all their doubts, their dreads, their hopes—this was what all the past ages were striving to know. What we say is, that the revelation of Jesus Christ was the solution of that question. We who receive Him as the Son of God, one with the Lord of all, do aver the Creator of the universe to be the Deliverer of the universe. Whatever makes the earth corrupt, whatever makes human beings corrupt, we believe to come not from His order, but from a breach of His order. We are bound, by our allegiance to Him, not to accept anomalies as laws, but to strive against them. We are bound to believe that He is stirring us to strive against them. We have a right to pray against them, whatever they be, our prayers being merely the response to His inspirations—cries for the triumph of His will over that which opposes it. And if we believe that He is infinitely wise, as well as infinitely good—that we can only see a very little way—we shall leave our petitions, with no cowardice or distrust, in His hands. We believe that He has ordained summer and winter, seed-time and harvest. Continued rains at this season, we think from experience, are likely to hinder the fruits from appearing in their season—to make many starve; that is to say, we believe that they will interrupt or disturb God’s blessed order. Do they not, then, come from Him? We believe that, too. Rain is a gift of God, not a curse of the Devil. We believe, therefore, it is sent for some good end; for what special end we know not; that it is for the general end of correcting something which is amiss in our ways of acting or thinking, of making us less stupid and monotonous in our lives, less dependers upon chance, better husbandmen, less dead to the facts of nature and her demands upon man, we may assume without doubt, provided we assume a Fatherly Ruler of the world at all. To ask for the removal of the punishment is, then, as the prayer we have offered to-day teaches us, to ask for the removal of the cause, whatever it may be; to ask for repentance; to ask that we may be set right. Thus, from whatever point we start, we are brought back to the conclusion that the source of evil lies in the will; that our wills have set themselves in opposition to God’s will; that He is working to bring us into our true state; that all natural instruments are His instruments for this end. And therefore, when any tell us that we are continually forgetting the permanence of God’s nature and character, and wishing to warp laws to our own convenience, we confess the justice of the imputation, and are most grateful for all help in making it untrue. Therefore, we pray to God in such seasons as this, appealing to Him as being what He was in the generations of old, in the days of Noah’s flood, and before those days—appealing to Him as the God of law and order—appealing to Him against our own vicissitudes, irregularities, idolatry of accidents being certain that, if we do not appeal to Him, if we do not believe in such a God, we shall become the sport and slaves of all varying phenomena—we shall be unable to recognise anything firm or constant in the visible or the unseen world.
Thus, then, it is God’s judgment we invoke in all cases when we are acting in accordance with the teaching of the Bible or the Church. They never teach us to shrink from those judgments. Those texts which appear to justify such a course, if you weigh them well, point the opposite way; yes, and lay bare that very habit of mind in us which leads us to this perversion and this cowardice. Do you think that the Psalmist, who said, “Judge me, O Lord, and plead my cause,” contradicted himself when he said, “Enter not into judgment with thy servant, for in thy sight shall no man living be justified?” I am satisfied that one of these prayers explains and confirms the other. “Do not, O Lord, look upon me, think of me, judge me as I am, apart from Thee, a poor, wretched, helpless atom, separated from all other atoms, having lost the principle of life and unity. Judge me as I am truly, related to Thee, taking refuge in Thee, beseeching Thee to search and see if there is any wicked way in me, to try me, and seek the ground of my heart, which is in Thyself!” Do you think that St. Paul, when he said, “Judge therefore yourselves, brethren, that ye be not judged by the Lord,” was contradicting his other assertion in the very same epistle—“I know nothing against myself, yet am I not hereby justified; for he that judgeth me is the Lord”? I think you will find that the judgment of God, which he wished them not to incur, was that of being treated as if they were part and parcel of the evil that was cleaving to them; that he wished them to judge between that evil and themselves; and that he bade them look boldly up to God, in His Son, to judge them, and justify them from that evil. And our failure to do this, brethren—our want of belief that God has sent His Son to justify us, and to deliver every one of us from his iniquities—our failure to believe that we do stand in Christ, pure and holy, and without blame, before Him, is the reason why we do not feel as the Apostle did about His judgments upon the world, but cherish just the opposite feeling, a desire that they should not come, or that they should not reach us. The last is, I think, the worst temper of the two. It is more noble, more righteous, to wish that the world should be allowed to go on in its wickedness and its misery, horrible as that desire is, than to wish that it should pass through the fires, and that we should have a special title of exemption from them. What! is our saintship come to this? Do we really desire to hug our evils, and not to let them be destroyed? Yet such will be our saintship, if the first thought, or the second thought, or the third thought, of our minds is about ourselves—if the first thought is not that which is expressed in this verse:
II. “And I heard as it were the voice of a great multitude, and as the voice of many waters, and as of the voice of mighty thunderings, saying, Alleluia: for the Lord God Omnipotent reigneth.” And the second thought is like unto it. “Let us be glad and rejoice, and give honour to him, for the marriage of the Lamb is come, and his wife hath made herself ready.” And the third grows out of the first and the second. “And to her was granted that she should be arrayed in fine linen, clean and white: for the fine linen is the righteousness of the saints.” Here is the true Divine order: Hallowed be thy Name; the Lord God Omnipotent reigneth! The eternally righteous Being has all power. He in whom is light and no darkness at all, is proved to be the ground of all things. Thy kingdom come. The Son has claimed humanity for His bride. She is the servant of the beast no longer; she has found her true Lord; she can see her glory in Him! “Thy will be done in earth as it is in heaven.” The Spirit clothes the bride with the graces and beauties of her Lord. Those who have nothing in themselves are able to look up to Him, and to become bright with His brightness.
III. “And he saith unto me, Write, Blessed are they which are called to the marriage supper of the Lamb. And he saith unto me, These are the true sayings of God. And I fell at his feet to worship him. And he said unto me, See thou do it not, I am thy fellow-servant, and of thy brethren that have the testimony of Jesus. Worship God; for the testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy.”
We have heard before of the voice of a great multitude. Now he speaks to me. Who? The prophet knows not more than we do. He is sure only that the message is a Divine one. And he is sure that it is distinct from that general chorus. It is directed to him. It must be Divine, for it tells him of that which has been the subject of all songs and prophecies since the world began. The union of Humanity with her true Husband—the overthrow of the idolatry that had separated them, and had degraded her—to this all the hopes of the creation, to this all the revelations of God, have pointed. And now some are called to celebrate this marriage. They are bidden to the bridal supper. The voice pronounces them blessed. To take part in such a celebration is to enter into fellowship with all blessed and redeemed spirits; with all that has been gracious, and pure, and noble, in the generations of earth, and in the worlds that have never known sin. May not humanity thus exalted be an object of adoration? Does not he who bears these tidings represent it? Has not hero-worship now found its justification? Has not the Son of Man destroyed the sin into which the elder ages fell? No, see thou do it not! The bridal of Humanity is the vindication, not the reversal of the second, as of the first, commandment. Each man is raised by that bridal. Each man who is content to be a fellow-servant with his brethren, to take his stand among those whose nature Jesus bore, whose death Jesus died, shares His glory. But that glory is to look above humanity, as He did. The spirit of prophecy has been throughout a testimony of Him—a testimony of a Man, who is one with God; who fully asserts the name of God; in whom men may draw nigh to God.
And now He Himself appears—that Son of Man, who stood before the Prophet clothed in the robes of the High Priest, walking in the midst of the candlesticks; the same essentially, but bearing a different name, fulfilling another office.
IV. “And I saw heaven open, and behold a white horse; and he that sat upon him was Faithful and True, and in righteousness he doth judge and make war. His eyes were as a flame of fire, and on his head were many crowns; and he had a name written, that no man knew, but he himself. And he was clothed with a vesture dipped in blood: and his name is called the Word of God. And the armies which were in heaven followed him upon white horses, clothed in fine linen, white and clean. And out of his mouth goeth a sharp sword, that with it he should smite the nations: and he shall rule them with a rod of iron: and he treadeth the winepress of the fierceness of the wrath of Almighty God. And he hath on his vesture and on his thigh a name written, KING OF KINGS, AND LORD OF LORDS.”
“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” So speaks St. John at the opening of his Gospel. Those who comment upon the sentence tell us how what they call the Logos doctrine was propagated by a Jew of Alexandria; how it was accepted by the Christian fathers in that city, in the second century; how it was connected by them, as well as by its first teacher, with thoughts derived from heathen philosophy. They then inquire whether it is likely that such a profound speculation should have reached a fisherman of Galilee?—whether it is not much more probable, that what we call his Gospel, was a compilation of doctors in a later time? All the learning which can be brought to bear upon the history of human thought must be valuable. No speculations about it need cause one the slightest anxiety. But, as I have urged upon you before, it may be very desirable to know, whether the discovery of the doctrine of gravitation can be traced to Newton or Kepler, or any earlier thinker; but it is somewhat more important to know, whether the doctrine of gravitation is true or false; whether it will explain the facts of the universe; or, whether it is only contained in a book called ‘The Principia.’ To the like test we must bring the statements in the beginning of St. John’s Gospel. To that test they appeal. Learned doctor, thou knowest all that Philo or Origen said about the Word of God; but, if He has nothing to do with thee—if thou canst interpret thyself without Him—thou mayst as well let Philo, and Origen, and the wicked man who forged St. John’s name, alone! Their doctrine can be of no significance to thee, for, in that case, it is a mere fiction. The Gospel assumes, that all the light which is in thee, or in any man, proceeds from His light; that neither thou, nor Philo, nor Origen, could have used any words, or understood any words, but for this Word; that their darkness, and mine, and every man’s, arises from our refusing to own this light and to dwell in it. Supposing this to be so, it seems nowise unnatural that all prophets should speak of a Word of God as coming to them; that heathens should confess they needed such an enlightener of their hearts and reasons. Nor can it be surprising, at least to us, that a Jew of the first century, meditating on that which he believed was revealed to the prophets of his land—meditating on what he saw to be the aspirations and perceptions of men out of the circle of their covenant—should have arrived at a more definite and distinct apprehension than his predecessors, of some Being related to the Mind of God—related to the mind of man—in whom God and man might hold converse. The question of all questions is, whether this Being is really the Illuminator of man, or only the Illuminator of wise and select men? whether He was made flesh, and dwelt among men, that He might give them power to become sons of God? or, whether He was only a spiritual emanation or conception, of whom men might dream, but who could not speak to them, rule them, judge them? Supposing He were actually what St. John says He was, then, I say, the poor Galilean fisherman was exactly the person to whom we should believe, for the interests of mankind, that He would declare Himself, that so He might be shewn to be verily and indeed the Enlightener, not of those who bring their light with them but of those who confess that, left to themselves, they are blind.
And now, this Word of God, who has been declared to be the light of men—the source of good to all men, and to each man—comes forth judging and making war. Who else can judge but He who has been conversing with every heart, who knows all the passages of it, who has been carrying on His secret judgments who has been bringing every man to His bar—every day since man began to sin? Who can make war but He who has been striving with each man, with each family, with each nation—but He, against whom every idolatrous, malicious, foul thought, and desire, and word, and deed, that has corrupted societies or individuals, has been striving? We know how dark and bloody their wars have been; history tells us of them. What we want to know is, whether all has been bloody and dark—whether all is to end in darkness and blood? Heaven is opened, and One is seen sitting upon a white horse, who is Faithful and True, who, in righteousness, judges and makes war. He sees into the heart of things. Nothing that is good, nothing that is His own creation, can escape those eyes, which are as a flame of fire, or be lost; nothing which is evil and corrupting can hide itself from them, and be saved. On His head are many crowns. We cannot measure the extent or variety of His victories. We only know that all His enemies are to be put under His feet. It is not we who have given Him His name; no man knoweth it but Himself. He knows all our names. Thanks be to God, we cannot fathom the depth of His! His vesture is dipped in blood; not in the blood of others only, but in His own. He has poured out His own blood for men. He will not spare any blood which is needful for the redemption of the earth, for the destruction of its destroyers. He does not come alone; the armies in heaven are with Him. The Son of God is the Firstborn of many brethren. All the sons of God have received His Spirit, are permitted to take part in His work. And that work must be a work of justice and of vengeance. A sharp sword goes out of His mouth. The nations have felt the rod of wickedness; they must feel the rod of righteousness. The oppressor must know that there is a power more terrible than his. He has used the name of God to strengthen his purposes of fierceness and wrath; he has thought that the earth brought forth its fruits only to make him drunk: now he must know what is the winepress of the fierceness of the wrath of Almighty God!
V. All through this book I have been tracing the record of a mighty catastrophe, which was to conclude that age of the world. Utterly intolerable the thought of that catastrophe would be if we might not call it a judgment, if we were not told who was the Judge. It is when I have heard that the Son of Man, the Lamb who was slain, is King of kings and Lord of lords, that I can bear to read the next verses. “And I saw an angel standing in the sun; and he cried with a loud voice, saying to all the fowls that fly in the midst of heaven, Come and gather yourselves together unto the supper of the great God; that ye may eat the flesh of kings, and the flesh of captains, and the flesh of mighty men, and the flesh of all men, both free and bond, both small and great. And I saw the beast, and the kings of the earth, and their armies, gathered together to make war against him that sat on the horse, and against his army. And the beast was taken, and with him the false prophet that wrought miracles before him, with which he deceived them that had received the mark of the beast, and them that worshipped his image. These both were cast alive into a lake of fire burning with brimstone. And the remnant were slain with the sword of him that sat upon the horse, which sword proceeded out of his mouth: and all the fowls were filled with their flesh.”
There is no attempt to disguise in this passage, or in any part of Scripture, the horror and loathsomeness of a battle. We should never shrink from the steady contemplation of facts, or cover them with any seemly sentimental phrases. Those will never alter the nature of things. To endure the visible, we must learn to look into the invisible. To bear the darkness that is over the earth, the veil of the temple must be rent asunder. We can bear to hear of the flesh of men and animals being given to the birds of the air, if the result is to be that the beast and the false prophet—the military tyranny which is grinding the nations, the spiritual tyranny which is preying upon their inward being—are cast into the lake of fire. And this the prophet understands to be the meaning of that travail and anguish through which the world in his day was passing. It was the judgment upon the prince of this world; it interpreted all the judgments that had gone before. Every one had been a battle between the same powers, every one contained the pledge of that issue. Till the Word of God had been fully revealed in the incarnation of the Son of Man, in His Passion, in His return to glory, there had still been a heavy cloud over all the doings and destinies of God’s creatures. The years since Adam came forth seemed to be only years of mutual destruction for his race, just as the ages before seemed to be periods of mutual destruction for the inferior races. Now, when the Head of the universe had gone through its conflict and misery, a light was thrown back upon all the past. His life was seen to be stronger than all the powers of death which had been working in God’s universe.
And so, again, the battle of that age throws a light onwards into all the battles of subsequent generations. It is hard and sickening to read of Christian men, sons of God, giving their brethren to be food to the fowls of the air; it is fearful to think for what ends the kings of the earth and the great captains have slain each other. But, doubt it not, in every one of these fights, some beastly power, some lie which has deceived the world, has been thrown down and cast into the lake of fire. Amidst all our reasons for mourning, the spirits of heaven, and those of our brethren who have fought the fight and joined them, have seen reasons for thanksgiving and triumph. Something has been done for the purification of the earth, for the fuller manifestation of the sons of God; new conquerors come from the anguish of earth, to take part in the righteous government of it; new guests come from the horrible supper of death to sit down at the marriage supper of the Lamb; one more step is gained in the triumph of the Perfect Will over rebellious wills; one step more towards that restitution of all things which God, who cannot lie, has promised by the mouth of all His holy prophets since the world began.