The passage: John saw a white cloud, and on it one like the Son of Man, wearing a golden crown and holding a sharp sickle. An angel came out of the temple and cried to him to swing his sickle and reap, because the earth’s harvest was ripe; and the one on the cloud reaped the earth. Then another angel with a sickle came from the temple, and another with power over fire came from the altar, calling for the grapes of the earth’s vine to be gathered, since they were ripe. The vine was gathered and thrown into the great winepress of God’s wrath, which was trodden outside the city, and blood flowed from it as high as the horses’ bridles for a distance of sixteen hundred furlongs. Then John saw seven angels holding the seven last plagues, in which God’s wrath is completed. He saw a sea of glass mixed with fire, and those who had conquered the beast and its image and mark and the number of its name standing on it with harps of God, singing the song of Moses and of the Lamb: that the Lord God Almighty’s works are great and marvellous, His ways just and true; that all should fear and glorify Him, for He alone is holy, and all nations will come and worship because His judgments are revealed. The temple of the tabernacle of the testimony in heaven was opened, and the seven angels came out clothed in pure white linen with golden girdles; one of the four living creatures gave them seven golden vials full of God’s wrath; and the temple was filled with smoke from His glory and power, so that no one could enter until the seven plagues were finished.
Someone will ask me: does this vision too belong to the first century? Are we then to give up the fear and the hope that stay in all our minds—the thought that the Son of Man really will come to judge the living and the dead? Is there to be no future harvest of the earth? Will no angel put in his sickle and reap it?
My friends, it seems to me that the expectation of judgment is far too weak in every one of us. The preacher who could deepen it into a firm and lasting conviction would be the greatest of all preachers; and whoever does anything to lessen what there is of it in any person is, to that degree, most harmful. I find that John the Baptist, that our Lord Himself, and that every one of His Apostles was a preacher of judgment—a judgment near at hand, one coming upon the very generation they addressed. I think it is because we have not taken their words literally enough that we have been unable to speak in their spirit, to feel and to make others feel that a judgment hangs over us, that the Son of Man really will appear in His Father’s glory, and that each person will have the secrets of his heart and the deeds he has done laid bare before him. No book, it seems to me, would bring this truth home to us so well as the Apocalypse, if we read it plainly. While I refuse to twist any of its words out of their obvious sense—accepting them as explaining the sense in which the Baptist, our Lord, and His disciples spoke—I am forced to feel and confess that the judgment is set and the books are open; that nothing can be hidden from Him with whom we have to deal; that every good and evil seed in every person and every society is ripening toward its harvest; that the fruit of the one must be gathered into the barn, and the fruit of the other burned up.
I. We have just heard the message, “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.” I took these words to sound very cheering to someone looking out on a world that was worshipping the beast and its image. They assured him that there was a realm where a different worship reigned, and that there was a way from this realm into that one. Then he looks, “and behold, a white cloud, and upon the cloud one sat like unto the Son of Man, having on his head a golden crown, and in his hand a sharp sickle.” The prophet’s first thought might have been that the blessing of the dead consisted in leaving a world where the Son of Man was not recognized—no, rather, not reigning. This sight scatters that dark delusion. On a cloud drawn up from earth, though its whiteness testifies of light and of heaven, he sees no strange form, but the form of Him who always claimed that human name for Himself, who in His birth, His passion, His resurrection, and His ascension had vindicated it as His own. That the earth was passing through a terrible crisis was plain enough. Wise pagans saw it, and supposed the gods were busy taking vengeance on men and cared nothing for men’s safety or rescue. To St. John the Savior of men was revealed as Himself the reaper of the earth. He has won His crown; the divine glory rests on Him. But in His hand is the sign that the work being done on earth is His doing. That was the revelation the exile on Patmos needed. It is the revelation we need. He did not need to be told that a consuming process was going on—everyone could see that. But to learn who was directing that process, and to learn that it was for the destruction of the destroyer, that was precious knowledge indeed. If we accepted it—if we interpreted by it the events passing in our own age, which will make up its history for ages to come—would not that knowledge be worth something to us? The Son of Man sat on the white cloud then; He sits on the white cloud now. If the mists were cleared from our spirits, we should see Him, and that would be an encouragement and a warning in our work such as nothing else could give.
“And another angel came out of the temple, crying with a loud voice to him that sat on the cloud, Thrust in thy sickle and reap, for the time is come for thee to reap, for the harvest of the earth is ripe.” This voice came from the inner temple; it expressed the divine purpose and will. That purpose and will the Son of Man had been fulfilling before the worlds existed. He fulfilled it in the act of creation, when all things came forth at His word, with man at the head of all, and the whole was very good. He fulfilled it in His agony and His cross. He fulfilled it in His triumph over death, and space, and time. And now that purpose and will is to be fulfilled in an act of judgment. All that He has done on earth for men has not been in vain. The resistance to His work has not defeated it, as mortals might conclude. The end of the age has come. The results of the good and evil that have been growing side by side are now plain. “The harvest of the earth is ripe.”
“And he that sat on the cloud thrust in his sickle, and the earth was reaped. And another angel came out from the altar, which had power over fire; and cried with a loud voice to him that had the sharp sickle, saying, Thrust in thy sharp sickle, and gather the clusters of the vine of the earth; for her grapes are fully ripe. And the angel thrust his sickle into the earth, and gathered the vine of the earth, and cast it into the great winepress of the wrath of God. And the winepress was trodden without the city, and blood came out of the winepress, even unto the horse bridles, by the space of a thousand and six hundred furlongs.”
The reaping of the earth means, I take it, the gathering in of the fruits of all the divine seed that had been scattered over the nations and in men’s hearts. Nothing that had been accomplished in society through laws, institutions, family memorials, and traditions, through the voice of prophets and the deeds of patriots; nothing accomplished for the growth and purifying of the individual soul through the countless influences of nature, the voices of mothers, the power of mutual love, through sorrows and separations, reconciliations and hopes; no devout wish that ever rose in prayer and sacrifice, having first been inspired by the very One to whom it was offered—none of this was to be lost. The Son of Man has watched it all and has stored it among His treasures; all has come from Him, and will now be claimed by Him. That this holds true for each individual person we shall be told later. Here the words lead us rather to dwell on the great human results of all this divine cultivation—those that are to survive into the coming age, that are to give that age its shape and character. If the reaping of the earth meant the destruction of the earth, it would obviously be pointless to speak of a new age about to begin when the old one passed. But reaping does not mean destruction in ordinary human speech, nor in Holy Scripture. And Scripture does speak of the end of an age, and of a better age to follow. The very lesson this passage teaches—and the whole Apocalypse teaches—is that God’s fires are not meant to ruin the earth, which is the work of His hands, but to ruin those who have defiled it by the work of their hands.
This is the theme of the words that follow. Not only the earth is God’s, but the fire too. The fire is His servant. The message about it comes from the altar. It is to serve, as it always has, both to kindle the sacrifice and to burn the refuse. The vine of the earth here plainly stands for all that is not of God’s planting—all the thoughts and bloody deeds that have sprung from man’s rebellious will, and that have made the earth drunk and foul. The grapes of this vine, like the grain grown from the divine seed, are now fully ripe. When the grain is reaped, it may still have many processes of threshing and winnowing to pass through. The grapes are cast into the winepress. What kind of winepress it is we shall be told more clearly later. But the signs here cannot be mistaken. A terrible conflict between rival factions, coming just before the ruin of a city or an empire, looks at first only like a cause for despair. To see, over a stretch of sixteen hundred furlongs, nothing but blood rising to the horses’ bridles—human beings destroying one another, and the innocent animals perishing with them—is a sight to make an ordinary man weep; how much more a seer who believes man was made in God’s image and who has proclaimed that God is Love. The sight would be utterly appalling if the seer had not that faith to hold him up. Holding it, he cannot find in the darkest such spectacle the slightest reason for despair. The wrath and fury and wickedness of men, which have been piling up for centuries, have reached their climax, have come to their great day of trial. Now they are to spend and exhaust themselves. Now they are to meet another power. The winepress cannot be regarded merely as one in which the grapes of the earth are crushed. It is the great winepress of the wrath of God. The wrath of love, the wrath of goodness, is to meet the wrath of hatred and evil. It is to be proved, on this earth and throughout God’s whole creation, which of the two is the mightier.
And so we are prepared for the words that have been, rather awkwardly I think, separated from these and made the opening of another chapter.
- “And I saw another sign in heaven, great and marvellous, seven angels having the seven last plagues; for in them is filled up the wrath of God.” There has been much discussion in the Christian Church about when these seven last plagues began, or are to begin, how long they will last, and whether we are living through one of them now. I cannot regret that such questions have been raised, because I am sure some have been led by them to reflect on the plagues visiting themselves, their families, their country, or Christendom in general, and to ask: Where did these come from, and what message do they carry? Those who have been used to receiving one calamity or another with the thoughtlessness and dullness we are all prone to may well be thankful if, by any means—through some interpreter of prophecy, or through their own ambition to interpret it—they are brought to believe that this or that event may have a divine force in it, may be the sign and witness of God’s government. For then will they not go on, step by step, to say: “If this is true in one case, must it not be true in all? Dare I single out any one of the events I have shared in, or read of as affecting my country or mankind, and say: This I can attribute to the Lord of heaven and earth, but not that; this deserves my earnest thought to grasp its meaning, but those I may safely pass over?” I can imagine that the very uncertainty of these guesses has led many serious people into a truer state of mind. They could not be sure that any given plague might not fit the description of these Apocalyptic plagues; so why not act on the conclusion that all have the same general character, that not one falls outside the divine orbit, that not one is a stray messenger on an errand of its own? But if any are tempted into frivolous debating about the matches between particular disasters of their own time and those referred to here, until they treat as indifferent and profane the ones where they find no resemblance—that atheistic view at once proves they cannot have sat at the Apostle’s feet, cannot have profited by his revelations. It is no answer to say, “But he speaks of seven last plagues; we want to know which these are.” Certainly he does. And that very word last, and its explanation in the phrase “in them was filled up the wrath of God,” shows that they were the same in kind as everything that came before them; that they marked the winding-up of a period—a period that had been all along under divine cultivation and discipline, not a single event of which an Apostle could ever view except as a sign of a purpose of God or of a struggle against that purpose. Suppose, if you like, that there is to be a winding-up of our dispensation; believe, if you will, that it is near. But the more you hold this view, the more you should be afraid of resting anything on guesswork; the more you should wish to be in a calm, steady, habitual state of readiness for what is coming—not as something new or strange, but as the climax of the divine drama that every earlier step has been foretelling.
V. The real lesson we must learn from what we see, and from what we read, and from comparing the two, is set out in the next three verses: “And I saw as it were a sea of glass mingled with fire: and them that had gotten the victory over the beast, and over his image, and over his mark, and over the number of his name, stand on the sea of glass, having the harps of God. And they sing the song of Moses the servant of God, and the song of the Lamb, saying, Great and marvellous are thy works, Lord God Almighty; just and true are thy ways, thou King of saints. Who shall not fear thee, O Lord, and glorify thy name? for thou only art holy; for all nations shall come and worship before thee; for thy judgments are made manifest.” There was a time when those who stand on this sea of glass and sing these songs had longed for some solid footing of their own; they liked to think that they, at least, were safe on some raft or patch of ground, even if the world were drowned in the waters or burned up in the fire. That craving has been taken from them. The ledges of earth have been swept away, the planks have floated out of reach. Now they stand by faith in God alone. The sea is all they have to rest on; they may drop into the fire at any moment. Their one security is that God will hold them up. They can entrust themselves and the whole universe to Him. And that is their victory over the beast, and its name, and its mark, and the number of its name. Self-seeking, and the distrust that goes with self-seeking—these are the beast’s traits, the marks he stamps on his followers. The battle against them has been hard and terrible. Every moment it is renewed; every moment the tyrant threatens them and may prevail again. Their victory lies in their faith, not in themselves. They can trust God on the sea of glass in the midst of the fire. They know the sea is His, and that He made it; that this sea of glass is before His throne and reflects His image. They know the fire is His; that it comes from His altar; that it is the fire of love and will consume whatever is hostile to love.
Therefore these men have the harps of God, and they sing the song of Moses, the servant of God: “Moses said, I will sing unto the Lord, for he hath triumphed gloriously: the horse and the rider hath he thrown into the sea. The Lord is my strength and song, and he is become my salvation: he is my God, and I will prepare him an habitation, my fathers’ God, and I will exalt him. The Lord is a man of war: the Lord is his name. Pharaoh’s chariots and his host hath he cast into the sea: his chosen captains also are drowned in the Red Sea.” Here is the song of the old covenant, of the old world. It is the song of God’s victory over the oppressor, of God’s rescue of the oppressed. It can never become obsolete as long as there are oppressors and oppressed in creation. Woe to those who would take a single word out of it, who would try to make it gentler toward the wrongdoer by making it less of a witness for the one who suffers.
But they also sing the song of the Lamb. That, even more than the other, is a song of redemption. That, even more than the other, is a song of judgment. Moses, the servant of God, declares the great and marvellous works of the Lord—how forever He wars against the tyrant, and forever He wars on behalf of the weak and the crushed. The Lamb of God, the perfect image of the Father, reveals not only His works but His ways; He shows Him as He truly is. The Lamb not only fights the tyrant but submits to the tyrant; not only fights for the weak and crushed but becomes the weakest and most crushed of all. He strips Himself of all power, so that the eternal love of God may be seen through His emptiness. He clothes Himself with power so that it may be seen that all the power of the universe is the power of love, and that it must beat down everything opposed to it. So it is with infinite delight and satisfaction that those who have the harps of God contemplate His judgment. In their minds redemption and judgment have become inseparable. All the plagues falling on the earth are to glorify that Name which alone is holy. All are for the good of the nations; for the nations will at last come and worship before Him; they will renounce the destroyer and confess the deliverer.
- “And after that I looked, and, behold, the temple of the tabernacle of the testimony in heaven was opened: and the seven angels came out of the temple, having the seven plagues, clothed in pure and white linen, and having their breasts girded with golden girdles. And one of the four beasts gave unto the seven angels seven golden vials, full of the wrath of God, who liveth for ever and ever. And the temple was filled with smoke from the glory of God, and from his power; and no man was able to enter into the temple till the seven plagues of the seven angels were fulfilled.” I hardly need to point out to you how tenderly the Apostle lingers over the old names and old symbols so dear to him and to his fathers: how he speaks of the tabernacle of the testimony, bringing back all the memories of the wilderness; of the temple of which no relic was to remain on earth; of the pure white linen and the golden girdles of those priests whose last days had been days of sin and whose end had come. He can bear to let them go, because each has found its meaning, each has been transfigured. The tabernacle of the testimony in heaven is now open. There is no longer a shadow of the divine Presence; there is a full, clear, genuine testimony of what it is. The glory of God is revealed without a veil in the face of a Man. And so there is now an abiding, unchangeable temple, in which no sound of axe or hammer was ever heard, which no Chaldean or Roman can destroy. The linen is truly pure and white, and the girdles of these priests of the inner temple are truly golden. The prophet never needed this vision of their purity and brightness more than now, for they carry with them the seven last plagues. He must have his own faith strengthened—and must strengthen ours—that what we call vengeance is really punishment; that judgments are truly for separating light from darkness; that the kingdom of light will prevail forever, and the kingdom of darkness be overthrown.
On whom the seven vials were poured out, and what their effects were, the next chapter will tell us. What we learn here is that they are full of the wrath of God. I have wanted you to weigh that expression seriously, and to give it all the force it gains from being used by the last of the Bible’s seers. Being a Jew himself, he must be taken as the interpreter of how his fathers used it; the man who has set forth all the mysteries of Christian theology may tell us what place it holds in that theology. He does not see less wrath burning through the universe than Moses or David saw; in his visions it reaches more deeply to the center of things and spreads over a wider circumference. Everywhere the consuming fire is at work; it will not stop until its task is done. The wrath is of Him who lives forever and ever. What is true of one time is true of another. The same Being must be carrying on the same war; that winepress which His Son trod in the wilderness, in the garden, on the cross, must be fully trodden. What He died and rose to conquer, all the powers of creation must be fighting against. Let us understand and believe it. They are fighting against it in you and me and in the whole world; whatever in us loves and makes a lie, whatever lie is seizing power over men, the God who lives forever hates with an unquenchable hatred; this—in each human creature, and in the whole of human society—is meeting His fierce and eternal wrath. Would you ask that this wrath be less fierce? Would you like to set a time when it shall stop burning? Then you are praying for your own ruin and the world’s; you are praying that you may be left to your own lies—to the father of lies; you are praying that the Infinite Love to which you owe every joy you ever had or ever can have should come to an end and give way to that other wrath which cherishes everything evil and seeks to devour everything good. Let us hope, and steadily believe, that this shall never be. Let us accept the assurance of God’s word that it never shall. There are moments—the prophets say so—when the plagues darkening the world seem even to close the temple of God, so that no one can enter it. But they are sent out from that temple; they are meant to clear the air of the mists that have hidden it from men’s spirits. It may be that today, as you have listened to the news of the Father of an infinite majesty, of the honorable, true, and only Son, and of the Holy Ghost the Comforter, dwelling in blessed and eternal Unity, other visions have floated before you that have hidden that beautiful and glorious vision. Why, you have asked, am I to be told of an eternal wrath surrounding those who confound the Person or divide the Substance? And if by an eternal wrath—a wrath of God—you have meant an earthly wrath, the wrath of an evil, selfish man, or of an evil spirit, you may well ask how goodness and wickedness, light and darkness, can be brought into such close contact. Or if by those against whom this wrath is aimed you have understood some neighbor of our own day, or someone who left the world in ages past, you may well have trembled lest you should be bringing down on yourselves that dreadful sentence, “With what judgment you judge, you shall be judged; what measure you mete, it shall be measured to you again.” But if you have given to eternal wrath the sense it bears in this divine book—the sense that links it with the God who lives forever and ever—then surely you cannot help wishing, for your own sake and for mankind’s, that there should be no easing of this wrath until there has perished utterly and forever whatever in men’s hearts, or will, or reason tends to confound blessed distinctions or to tear apart what is one. We shall find how much there is in ourselves that leads to that confusion and that division; we shall see how it mixes into all our thoughts, darkening and dividing the forms and workings of the outward world, the dealings of daily life, and our view of the history and character of men, as well as our view of the nature of God. We shall want God’s judgment to search us, so that we may see all things as they are in God’s divine light, not jumbled together by our fancy, nor torn apart by our failure to trace their inner harmony. We shall be sure that the very same causes that make us refuse justice to the differences of other men, and shrink from fellowship with them, also interfere with our grasp of the perfect Unity revealed in the Persons of the Father, the Son, and the Spirit. We shall not doubt that the full revelation of that Mystery of Love which in words we have confessed today will be a revelation of the glory of God in man, and throughout the whole earth. We shall not doubt that when we fully enter into that revelation, we shall have won a victory over the selfish power that seeks to set heaven and earth at war; that we shall be able to sing the song of Moses and of the Lamb—the song of triumph over fallen tyranny and division, the song of a redeemed and reconciled universe.