Pastor David B. Curtis
Pastor David B. Curtis
The plan of the book - In The Parousia, Dr. Stuart Russell points out that it is-a great mistake to regard the Apocalypse as "an intricate maze, without any intelligible plan, ranging through time and space, and forming a chaos of heterogeneous ages, nations, and incidents, when in reality there is no literary composition more methodical in its arrangement and more artistic in its design." He shows that among the remarkable features of the book is the fact that each division ends with a catastrophe representing either an act of judgment or a scene of triumph, and that just as Pharaoh's dream was one, although to make its lesson doubly sure it was repeated and seen under two different forms, [1] so also the several visions of the Apocalypse are not really consecutive, but run as it were parallel to each other, and merely give different aspects and varied representations of the same set of events. In the last section of his most able and fascinating book Dr. Russell gives numerous extracts from the Jewish historian Josephus. These make it morally certain that, in the transactions that accompanied and immediately followed the siege and destruction of Jerusalem the Apocalypse from the fourth chapter up to the beginning of the 20th chapter received an exhaustive fulfilment ; and that much that Josephus afterwards recorded was seen in vision by John, and in the Revelation was described by him in pictorial language before it actually took place. In justification of this belief it is impossible within our present limits to do more than recall some of the remarkable parallels to the Apocalypse which are to be found in Josephus. It is of course to be remembered that the Revelation describes both heavenly and earthly things, and that so far as history written after the event is concerned we have no independent record of things that then happened in the spiritual world, and only a fragmentary record of what happened on earth. It is therefore quite impossible to find in the historian Josephus a counterpart to every incident of the Revelation. The resemblances, however, between the two are so numerous and so striking as to afford the strongest presumptive evidence that they are describing the same series of events.
The seven seals - At the opening of the first of the seven seals we have probably a symbolic representation of the outbreak of the Jewish war under Vespasian, in the reign of Nero, 66 A.D. The first horse is white, for little or no blood is shed at first ; and the rider is armed with a bow, a weapon used at a distance. Yet already the issue of the war is not doubtful. The Roman warrior " came forth conquering and to conquer." And soon blood begins to be freely shed. The second horse is red. Peace is taken from the land which is the scene of the war, and the whole country is soon in a fierce tumult. The Romans gain an additional advantage, by civil war springing up -the Jews fight among themselves. The " great sword," which had now taken the place of the bow, finds its explanation in the fact that the war soon became a hand-to-hand conflict, and terrible was the slaughter that followed.
With the opening of the third seal a black horse is seen symbolising the horrors of famine which ere long made themselves felt. Josephus (Wars 5. 10. 2) records the scarcity and dearness of food, and how fearfully the inhabitants of Jerusalem suffered from hunger.
He also records that John of Gischala, one of the rival leaders of the people, not, only seized the sacred vessels of the temple, but also distributed among his adherents the wine and oil which the priests used for pouring over the sacrifices (Wars 5. 13. 6). Striking is the parallel between these facts and Rev. vi. 6, especially in the translation preferred by the American revisers, a quart of wheat for a shilling. and three quarts of barley for a shilling "-implying great scarcity the revisers remark-" and the oil and the wine hurt thou not."
In the fourth horse, which was of a pale color, and the name of whose rider was Death (Rev. vi. 8) there is apparently a statement of the intensified horrors of the siege of Jerusalem , as to which we have abundant evidence in Joseph-Lis (Wars 5. 12. 3 and 5. 13. 7). In the account of what followed the opening of the sixth seal we have, in the language of gorgeous Oriental poetry, a description of physical convulsions similar to that given by our Lord in Matt. xxiv. 29, and which (five verses later on) He solemnly declared would take place ere the generation to whom He spoke passed away. The term " kings of the land (or earth)," Rev. vi. 15, is applied by Peter to the rulers of the Jews (Acts iv. 26). The scene that follows finds its explanation in the fact that the limestone hills of Palestine are honeycombed with caverns which from time immemorial have been the dens of robbers and the shelter of fugitives. It is remarkable that Josephus records that these caverns and subterranean passages formed the last refuge a nd hiding place of vast numbers of the Jews after the capture of the city (Wars 6. 7. and 9 ; and 7. 2. 2). And if they sought to hide themselves thus from man, they may well have tried in a similar way to hide themselves from the divine Judge. Certain it is that on His way to crucifixion Jesus had declared to the women of ,Jerusalem that there were days coming apparently in the lifetime of them and their children when there would be those who would say to the mountains fall on us," and to the hills " cover us " (Luke xxiii. 30).
At this great crisis the catastrophe is represented as interrupted to secure the safety of God's faithful people (Rev. vii). lit the Revised Bible we read that those arrayed in white robes had not merely come out of " great tribulation,"' but out of " the The phrase clearly points to great the cruel persecution of the Christians by the fiendish emperor Nero, and to that time of awful sorrow which Jesus had predicted as certain to precede the destruction of Jerusalem, and which as to its severity lie had spoken of as unparalleled in the history of the world before or after (Matt. xxiv. 2 Dan. xii. 1.)
The seven trumpets - There is a brief Silence separating the vision of the seven seals from that of the seven trumpets-a pause intimating that the drama is to be unfolded afresh, and that substantially the same series of events is to be made doubly sure by being- rehearsed under a different aspect. In accordance with the Old Testament analogy (2 Sam. viii 2, and Lam. ii. 8) the order to measure the temple (which at that time was still in existence) and the altar and the worshippers was a token of their impending desolation and destruction. The outer court did not need to be measured, for it was desecrated previously, an armed mob of Gentile Idumeans holding possession of the courts of the temple during the whole forty-two months that the war in Palestine, lasted.
Dr. Clement Clemance [2] gives the following summary of Archdeacon Farrar's explanation of the first six trumpets. [3]
First trumpet - Years of burning drought, rains of fire, disastrous conflagrations and earthquakes as those in Lyons, Rome, Jerusalem and Naples (63 to 68 A.D.).
Second Trumpet - Great calamities connected with the sea and ships, such as those of which the time of Nero furnishes abundant evidence.
Third Trumpet -The overthrow of Nero, the ominous failure. of the Julian line, and the bitterness occasioned thereby.
Fourth Trumpet - Ruler after ruler of the Roman empire and of the Jewish nation died by murder or suicide.
Fifth Trumpet - The star perhaps Nero. The host of locusts denoted demons."In the period between Christ's resurrection, and the fall of Jerusalem, the Jewish nation acted as if possessed by seven thousand demons "(Stier).
Sixth Trumpet - The army of the horsemen denotes the swarms of Orientals who gathered to the destruction of Jerusalem in the train of Titus, and the overwhelming Parthian host which was expected to avenge the ruin of Nero.
"Observe in ix. 10, a cryptographic allusion to the Parthian cavalry. The horses are said to be like scorpions, and to have stings in their tails, referring to the famous practice of the Parthian horsemen, who, when pursued after charging, would turn and fly, all the time shooting their arrows behind them." [4]
Seven mystic Figures (Ch. xii -xiv.) - In the woman clothed with the sun we have a symbol of the persecuted Jewish-Christian Church of the first century. The man-child seems to typify such of the members of that church as were martyred. The devil in the hope of doing, them deadly injury instigated their enemies to murder them But evil was overruled for good, and death proved the means of introducing them into the presence of the Father. They were caught up to God and His throne. In that which afterwards befell the woman herself, we have a representation of what happened to the members of the Hebrew Christian Church who survived the malice of their enemies. Our Lord had given an earnest warning to His disciples that when they saw Jerusalem surrounded with armies they were to escape from the city in utmost haste (Matt. xxiv. 15-18). Relying oil statements of Josephus (Wars 2. 20; 3. 3. 3), it has been generally admitted that the Christians carried out their Master's instructions, and at the outbreak of the .Jewish War availed themselves of an opportunity to flee across the mountains to the desert of Perea beyond Jordan. This exactly tallies with the statement that the woman-symbolising the surviving members of the Hebrew Christian church Church-hastily sought refuge in the wilderness, where for the whole duration of the war in Palestine- 1260 days or three years and a half-she remained, cared for by God. The total silence history as to what subsequently became of these Jewish Christians finds an adequate explanation in the belief that at the end of the siege they were caught up to meet the Lord in the spiritual world, and were conveyed away from earth to the heavenly home prepared for them, in the Father's house of many mansions (I Thess. iv. 17). At the Coming of the Lord in 70 A.D., their bodies suddenly died, but they themselves ascended with triumphant joy to the very throne of God.
[1] "And for that the dream was doubled unto Pharoah twice, it is because the thing is established by God, and God will shortly bring it to pass" (Gen. xli. 32). Compare Joseph's double deram (Gen. xxxvii), Gideon's double sign (Judges vi. 36-9), the double vision of Dan. ii. and vii., and our Lord's use of more than one parable to illustrate different sides of one and the same truth (as in Luke xv).
[2] Pulpit Commentary (REVELATION: p. 239).
[3] "Early Days of Christianity: " ii. 261-270.
[4] H.R. Haweis. "The Story of the Four:" p. 182.