We now proceed to the further details of chapter 13 from the point where our last section ended. We refer our readers to that introductory description of the rise of the antichristian system in the shape of the “Beast from the sea” and his ally, the “Beast from the earth” who perpetuates the reign of his master ‘who was, and is not, and yet is’ (chap. 17, v.8).
Revelation, chapters 13 and 14 belong to each other and should be read and studied together. The neglect of this principle has caused much mischief in modern times. If many present day writers and preachers had set THE MARK OF THE BEAST of chapter 13 against THE MARK OF THE FATHER’S NAME on the foreheads of the saints described in chapter 14 we should have had less of the frightfulness so confidently foretold in books and pamphlets so readily devoured by good Christians highly susceptible to prophetic sensations.
It must be obvious to all, that if in chapter 14 the writing of the Father’s Name in the foreheads of the saints means the invisible sealing of their souls as the property of the Almighty God, then the marking of the ungodly with the insignia of Antichrist can mean no other than their voluntary allegiance to the Tyrant of their souls. Neither the divine mark nor the devil’s mark can be a visible thing. Both are symbols marking the secret of ownership - and the Lord knoweth them that are His.
If in this respect we are in the region of symbolism, it follows that the remainder of these chapters is likewise symbolic. There is no such thing as a disgusting Beast with seven heads and ten horns, but there is a kingdom of darkness which dominates all history, ruling through tyrannies, despotisms, empires, superstitions and deceptions, holding life and conscience in bondage.
The agelong campaign by Satan to suppress the truth and keep the soul of man in bondage and darkness is the subject of these chapters. We have already seen in our introduction to chapter 13 that the symbolism of the great Beast with its heads and crowns, is taken from Daniel where the succession of Monarchies which held sway in the earth until the birth of Christ was foretold. The reemergence of this same Beast in the Apocalypse, with the same characteristics as in Daniel, teaches us that though Satan’s kingdom received its death blow when Christ rose from the dead, it was permitted to emerge again in more subtle form, even as Satan adapts himself to the changing conditions of the ages. One of the heads of the great Beast received a fatal wound (chap. 13, v.3), but the wound was healed and the Beast became active again to the wonder of the world. Even so, the heathen Roman power which was in its full strength at the time of Christ (and used its authority through Pilate to work the works of darkness by crucifying the Son of God), began slowly to decline and wither away till it was totally destroyed by Barbarian incursions. Yet from its ashes arose its ghost, an ecclesiastical empire masquerading as the kingdom of Christ, which for a far longer period of time was to dominate the earth. In the words of John, the “deadly wound was healed, and all the world wondered after the Beast”. Rome fell but Rome continued to live.
Power was given to this resurrected Beast, and who can fail to see that the ecclesiastical corporation which arose in place of the ancient heathenism of Satan’s kingdom, was in fact one and the same kingdom of darkness and death?
The forty-two months allotted to this revived empire (v.5) are clearly “prophetic” months. They are not to be taken literally but symbolically and they cover the whole period of time from the Isle of Patmos (John’s exile under Domitian) to Messiah’s Second Advent which some think cannot now be far away.
The second beast (v.11) with two horns like a lamb but speaking with the voice of the dragon (Satan), gives credence to the first beast by miracles of deception and the creation of a living, “talking” image of his master, causing all worshippers to receive a mark in forehead or hand, and forbidding to ‘buy or sell’, all who refuse.
In brief we have here in the second beast (elsewhere called “the false prophet”) the rise of a religious tyranny wielding the dread weapon of excommunication, and forbidding the preaching of the pure word of God. The talking image of the first beast is clearly the reproduction of the old paganism in Christian form, and we make no apology for reminding our readers that we have before us the image of the Church of Rome as the leader of those false forms of religious devotion by which heathenism is prolonged and the minds of men kept in bondage and darkness.
Nevertheless we do not hold the Church of Rome itself to be antichrist nor yet its titular head, the Pope, for as John in his epistles has taught us, ‘there are many antichrists’ (1 John 2:18). In John’s time, we did not have an apostate church, but we had the spirit of error spreading through the churches, denying the true humanity of Christ. The Pope has never denied either the humanity or the true deity of Christ but has always held in strict orthodoxy the doctrine of the Incarnation of Him who as the Second Person of the Holy Trinity is true God as well as true man. But Rome has overlaid the true prerogatives of Christ with a system of multiplied mediators and intercessors, with access to God placed securely in the hands of a priesthood which exercises the magical powers of a sacramentalism purporting to turn a wafer into the body and blood, soul and divinity, of the true Son of God. This image of the defunct pagan beast of the Caesars, still endures, but to it has now been added a new form of paganism which even the Pope will not acknowledge: a rationalistic paganism; the worship of man and of the human mind, the latest phase of apostate Protestantism.
WHO HATH EARS TO HEAR?
“If any man have an ear to hear, let him hear” writes John, enigmatically (verse 9). He is telling us that the interpretation of these chapters is the interpretation of spiritual mysteries. Few of those who write sensational prophetical books nowadays, heed this warning. What is here disclosed is not to be understood in any carnal or earthly sense, but has a deep spiritual meaning ascertainable only by patient searching.
This cautionary sentence (“He that hath an ear let him hear”) is found first in the words of the Saviour Himself when declaring the mission of His forerunner, John the Baptist: “And if ye will receive it, this is Elias which was for to come” (Matthew 11:14). The enigmatic nature of this statement (that John was the “Elijah” promised in Malachi 4:5) is marked by the Saviour’s words immediately following, “He that hath ears to hear let him hear” (v.15). If some of our writers of prophetical books had heeded this caution they would not have been so ready to tell us that the actual Elijah must in fact come again to the earth and be one of the Two Witnesses of Rev.11. What the Lord is saying is that Elijah has already come, and the prophecy is fulfilled in John the Baptist who came in the spirit and power of Elijah. Elijah’s translation into heaven was a signal to Israel that his ministry was not ended. He would return to complete his task of turning the hearts of the disobedient to the wisdom of the just (see Luke 1:17). The Jews did not recognise the fulfillment of the prophecy in John the Baptist because they did not have ‘ears to hear’. They were unable by reason of the hardness of their hearts, to perceive the spiritual in the external. Nor can our prophetical speculators see the meaning of the Book of Revelation so long as they persist in their externalism. Only he who has ears to hear can understand what is written. There is really no excuse for ignoring these divine cautions. They abound in the ministry of Christ who again and again warned the Jews that they could not understand because they did not have ears to hear. See Matthew 13:9 where the Saviour warns that the parable of the sower (and all other parables) could not be understood except by those with ears to hear. “Why speakest thou in parables?” asked the disciples. “Because” replied the Lord, “It is given unto you to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it is not given”.
(See the whole passage, Matt. 13:9-18)
The messages to the Seven Churches of Asia (Rev. chaps. 2 and 3), to whom the Apocalypse was first directed, are clearly to be understood in the spiritual sense also, because in each instance the same caution is given, “He that hath an ear let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches” (see chap. 2:7, and the repetition of the same formula at the end of each separate message). Note also that the whole Apocalypse is to be treated in the same enigmatic way, for the blessing of the Book is only to those who ‘hear’ the words of this prophecy (chap. 1.3)
We now proceed to a more detailed examination of the identity and the origin of the great historical Beast whose specific character is framed mysteriously in the enigmatic cipher - 666.
THE NUMBER OF THE BEAST AND HIS NAME
“Here is wisdom. Let him that hath understanding count the number of the beast: for it is the number of a man; and his number is Six hundred three score and six.” (Rev. 13. v.18)
Endless have been the attempts down the centuries, to interpret the mystic NUMBER OF THE BEAST - 666. Some have tried to explain the mystery in chronological terms. The number represents days, or is it weeks - or years? Bengel, a convinced chronologist, reckoned from Pope Gregory VII (1073) to the rise of Jesuitism (with whom he identified the rise of the second Beast of Rev. 13.11) a period of 666 years. Luther reckoned the Thousand Years of Rev. 20 from the birth of Christ to Gregory VII and then allowed 666 years from Gregory to the end of the Papacy. Unhappily for that calculation the papacy is still with us and it is the Reformation which has fallen. De Lyra (AD 1329) saw 666 years denoted between the Incarnation of Christ and the death of Mohammed while Pope Innocent III regarded it as the whole duration of Mohammedanism. But time has run out and Islam is still here, so is the Papacy, so are the Jesuits, and so is the world.
The numerical value of important names which have been found to yield the result, 666, has claimed as much attention as the chronologists. Hebrew, Greek and Latin alphabets used letters as numerals - in Britain we still do this in the case of our monarchs (George VI, Elizabeth II, Henry VIII, for instance), and frequently the number of the month (December is XII), and the dials of clocks. It has been discovered that LATEINOS or “The Latin Man” representing Imperial Rome or the Papacy (according to taste), yields in the Greek the exact total of 666, as also does the alleged title of the Pope in Latin - VICARIUS FILII DEI (Vicar of the Son of God). Bossuet found the same result in the name of the emperor Diocletian, while the Huguenots discovered the same in the name of France’s ‘Grand Monarque’ (their persecutor) Louis XIV, using the Latin equivalent of LOUIS, namely LUDOVICUS. Prudence requires, however, great caution in the use of such a method. The Speaker’s Bible reminds us of the saying of one of our interpreters, Reuss, that “this famous number has been made to yield almost all the historical names of the past eighteen centuries, including Titus, Vespasian, Simon Gioras, Julian the apostate, Genseric, Mahomet, Martin Luther, Benedict IX, Napoleon Bonaparte, and the Duke of Reichstadt” - and he adds, “it would not be difficult for any of us on the same principles to read in it one another’s names”.
Those familiar with Tolstoy’s “War and Peace” will remember how Napoleon’s name and character were confidently identified by patriotic and God-fearing Russians, with the mystic number, 666.
HERE IS WISDOM
We return to the words of the Apocalyptic vision, “Here is wisdom. Let him that hath understanding count the number of the beast, for it is the number of a man ….” “The mystery yields only to wisdom, that is divine, holy wisdom. The enigma has a spiritual meaning. Let us search for it - and what better place to begin our search but in Holy Scripture itself?
Sufficient attention has not been paid by the expositors to the significance of the number six in the history of Israel in the Old Testament. Six is the broken twelve, and twelve is always the signature of the Church in Old Testament and in New: the twelve tribes, the twelve apostles, the double-twelve of the elders in Rev. 4, the multiple of twelve in the numbering of the mystical tribes of the Church - the 144,000 of chapter 7, and the repetition of twelve and its multiples in the description of the completed Church in Rev. 21 seen in the measurements of the Holy City with its gates and walls. Six must therefore have a universal spiritual significance in Holy Scripture. It is the denial of God and the Church, and of the sacred Name of the Deity: His right to be worshipped alone, in spirit and in truth.
One of the earliest occurrences of the symbolic usage of this enigmatic number is in the primitive case of the giant who defied the armies of the Lord in the days of David - Goliath of Gath. This man symbolised the original apostasy of mankind - that of the antediluvian world, when '”There were giants in the earth in those days” (Genesis 6.4, etc.). Men of gigantic stature, giants too in wickedness and defiance of God and truth, stalked and terrified the earth when the barrier between the Church and the world was broken down, and the ‘sons of God’ (that is, the Church) lost their integrity and intermingled with the ‘daughters of men’ (that is, the apostate women of the corrupt line of Cain) and the whole population of the globe, with the exception of the family of Noah (and not all his family either) departed from the worship of God, their Creator and Redeemer.
Goliath was six cubits (and a span) tall: that is, above nine feet tall. His spearhead weighed 600 shekels of iron. “Who is this uncircumcised Philistine that he should defy the armies of the living God?” asked David (1 Sam. 17:26). His victory over Goliath was the type of Christ’s victory over death and hell. The persistence of the number six in the family as well as the equipment of Goliath is one of the keys to the understanding of the ‘number’ of the Beast in Revelation 13. Goliath had a brother of great stature who significantly had six fingers on each hand and six toes on each foot. (See 2 Sam. 21.20-22.)
The full significance of the number 666 however, is disclosed in Daniel in the account of Nebuchadnezzar’s great image set up in the plain of Dura, of dimensions 60 by 6 cubits. Goliath grows in dimensions and in importance the nearer we get to New Testament times. The image on the plain of Dura is ten times the dimensions of Goliath, and that of Revelation 13 is ten times that of Daniel. The connection in history and prophecy is settled therefore.
“Nebuchadnezzar the king made an image of gold whose height was three-score cubits and the breadth thereof of six cubits….” (Daniel 3:1)
That John’s vision has to do with Nebuchadnezzar’s blasphemous enterprise there can be no doubt. Throughout the Apocalypse, John seems to dwell in the Book of Daniel. Nebuchadnezzar dreamed of a great image and was told by Daniel that the dream was a forewarning by God of the course of history until the kingdom of God should come. The head of gold was the king of Babylon – “Thou art this head of gold” (Dan. 2:39). The dream image traced the rise and fall of the four great monarchies (Babylon, Persia, Macedon, and Rome) which dominated all history, in succession, until Christ came and set up a kingdom which was eternal and heavenly and which therefore could not pass away, but must destroy all worldly power in the course of its redemptive purpose. All has been fulfilled - is being fulfilled. At the height of the glory of the fourth monarchy the Babe was born in Bethlehem. Without human hands the image of world power disintegrated before this kingdom of Christ which fought no earthly battles and could not be seen by mortal eye, having no boundaries on earth, no visible royal centre, but by the unseen power of the Word preached, overcame kingdoms, cast down principalities, humbled proud dominions, obtained promises, wrought righteousness, stopped the mouths of lions, quenched the violence of fire, escaped the edge of the sword, out of weakness was made strong.
The image of this world’s power and pride was brought down to nothing by the Word of God. All this in effect was unfolded to Nebuchadnezzar, but he believed not, and remembered only that part of Daniel’s interpretation which had to do with his own glory: “Thou art this head of gold”. Deluded by the falseness of his own heart he sought to realise the fulfillment of his dream and establish his own glory, by the construction of an immense image of gold set up in the plain of Dura. Its precise measurements – 60 x 6 cubits - showed the impressive dimensions of his pride as he modeled the enterprise on the substance of his dream-image as interpreted by Daniel. He forgot the prophet’s warning – “The God of heaven hath given thee a kingdom, power, strength, and glory ....” and wrapped himself in his own pride, requiring (under pain of death in his fiery furnace) that all mankind should worship his image whenever they heard the music of his ungodly orchestra. The worship of the image meant in fact the worship of himself, who designed and built the image. In the contest which followed between the infatuated monarch and the three young Hebrews who defied him, he learned a terrifying lesson. His furnace could not consume the victims of his wrath, who walked in the midst of the fire with One whose form was “like unto the Son of God”.
What John sees in his vision of the seven-headed beast, is the development of the scene in Daniel, only this of John is of a significance so much more exceeding in its immensity, that the 60 and six of Nebuchadnezzar’s image is dwarfed by the six hundred, three score and six of the apocalyptic image. But that which is signified is the same in principle as that image on the plain of Dura. It is worldly power and pride exalted as an object of worship, elevated into a religion, imposed upon the consciences of men under pain of supreme penalty.
It is blasphemy against God to exalt man or the world of man, in place of the divine, and this has been the veritable history of fallen man throughout the ages.
John’s vision therefore shows to us how Satan, stung by his downfall at Calvary, and apprehensive of the very foundations of his power over the nations, raises a counterfeit to the kingdom of Christ, proclaims his own kingdom as the true kingdom of Christ, and by fraud and cruelty, false philosophy, religious exhibitionism, by all and every means diverts all worship to him self, so perpetuating his kingdom of darkness and death.
“THE NUMBER OF A MAN”
Hence the number of his kingdom is ‘the number of a man’. This does not mean that antichrist is ‘a man’ for the ‘number of a man’ means the measure of a man, that is, how men measure, or by what standard men judge or think. As usual John thinks in Hebrew while he writes in Greek, for the phrase is a Hebraism. In Isaiah 8, verse 1 we have, “The Lord said unto me, Take thee a great roll and write in it WITH A MAN’S PEN ....” In other words the subsequent prophecy which Isaiah writes is in human terms but to be understood in divine significance. So in Revelation 13:18, John is writing in human terms of that which is to be understood spiritually. The number of the beast though specified in human terms of 666, can only be interpreted according to the signification of that number in the wisdom of God. See also the same usage in Rev. 21:17: the wall of the Eternal City is given as 144 cubits “according to the measure of a man”. We are taught thereby that the measurement is only symbolic. It represents in fact a heavenly measure, “the measure of the angel” (same verse). As we perceive this we see at once that what we are beholding is not an actual city with street of purest gold and every gate a gem, but a heavenly state in which the very height of the visionary walls clearly shows that what we are seeing is the numbered church of the redeemed – “one hundred and forty and four cubits” - which is the number of the Church, the completed company of the elect according to the vision of the twelve tribes in Revelation 7 - 144,000.
The readiness of good Christian people to accept the prophetical interpretations of those who teach a literal 144,000 (in company with Jehovah’s Witnesses and other apocalyptic cults) and an actual Holy City let down from heaven as with cords, with gates and walls of jewel and jasper, and streets and buildings of pure gold -- this passes comprehension, especially when we are clearly told in the same passage that what John is actually seeing is “the bride, the Lamb’s wife”, not the place where she is supposed to dwell!
THE NUMBER OF BLASPHEMY
We conclude therefore that the Number of the Beast is not an actual number but a description of the nature of this apparition so described, and is to be understood as a multiplication of that spirit of idolatry and blasphemy by which Nebuchadnezzar sought to elevate himself to the pantheon of the gods, and enthrone heathenism in the place of the true God (whom Nebuchadnezzar had the best of reasons already to believe was there in the invisibility beside him). So the first Beast of Rev. 13 is identified by the precision of the number six and its multiples, to be of the same substance as that kingdom which Nebuchadnezzar represented, of pride, blasphemy, cruelty, darkness and death, a symbol of Satan’s kingdom which by deception and cruelty seeks to hold the mind of all men in bondage to sin and shame. Satan’s kingdom is an organised and mighty empire girded with every weapon of spiritual warfare to destroy the kingdom of Christ and perpetuate his own dark dominion of deceit and fraud.
The function of the second Beast (verse 11) is to act as priest to the first. Satan is a heathen. His kingdom from the foundation of the world has been one of heathenism. His kingdom in its old form received a deadly wound at the resurrection of Christ from the dead. It was no longer possible for Satan to maintain his power on the old foundation. A new thing had taken place in history, human and divine. Death had been overcome, and life and immortality brought to light in the gospel of Christ, the Son of God.
The Beastly empire of the devil received a deadly, a mortal wound (verse 3). Heathenism could not survive the shock of the empty tomb. The devil’s answer was to masquerade as the very kingdom which had been brought to light through the resurrection of Christ from the dead. Satan planned to carry on the old heathenism under the name of the veritable church of Christ, and he raised up the second Beast (with the lamb-like horns) to make an image of the first Beast through which Satan had for so many ages kept the mind of man in darkness and fear. The lamb-like Beast became the new and baptised heathenism, using all the names which belonged to the kingdom of Christ, but with a false significance.
Imposing itself upon the minds of those newly recovered from heathenism the fraud was scarcely perceptible. “There shall arise false christs and false prophets, and shall show great signs and wonders, insomuch that, if it were possible they shall deceive the very elect” Christ had warned in His latest counsels to His disciples (Matthew 24.24).
The deadly wound which heathenism received was ‘healed’ by incorporating the old errors in a masquerade of the Christian faith cunningly disguised as the Church of the apostles by using New Testament terms to describe heathenish ideas.
The miracles performed by this new and Christianised Beast (see verses 13 to 15) such as making fire to come down from heaven, and creating a ‘speaking image’ of the first Beast which had received the deadly wound at Calvary, are to be understood according to the manner of this Book of the Apocalypse. Fire coming down from heaven can well be understood as the bulls, decrees, anathemas, excommunications which for centuries kept Europe in thralldom. Strange that there should always have been more curses than blessings in the papal pronouncements of those times.
The image of the Beast which “talked” and smote with death those who would not conform, is likewise easily understood. The image of the Beast is the reproduction of heathen doctrines under the Christian name. Heathen goddesses were restored to the revived Pantheon under the old names – “Queen of Heaven”, “Our Lady of the Sea” and so forth. The name of that gracious lady, the virgin mother of our Lord, was incorporated into the imagery of false worship, along with the Twelve Apostles and a multitude of lesser celebrities after the pattern of the old heathenism. Nothing was missing. If miracles were needed, they were supplied by deception and fraud - for the human family is ever ready to believe in supernatural signs, which false religion has no difficulty in providing. How ready even now are good people to believe in the genuineness of the latest ‘miracle’ worker who comes, often in the Name of the Lord, to astound the unwary by fictitious wonders, and seldom without those generous rewards which the apostles of the Lamb refused.
We do not need to wait for some future day when the multitudes will receive with wondrous credulity the marvelous acts if not pretensions of the workers of miracles. Let us not be deceived by such wizardry. It is as old as the human race and is always a part of the stock-in-trade of Satan in his campaign for the soul of man. Let us remember the warning of the Saviour Himself already quoted above. Even the very elect are in danger of being deceived. THE DEVIL CANNOT WORK MIRACLES but he can deceive the impressionable with the greatest of ease.
BUYING AND SELLING
“And that no man might buy or sell save he that had the mark, or the name of the Beast, or the number of his name” (v.17).
Buying and selling in the prophetical term has naught to do with the commercial principles of trade. The prophet exhorts us to “buy” wine and milk without money and without price (Isaiah 55:1). Here in the Apocalypse buying and selling is claimed as the prerogative of the Beastly power. If the purpose of the whole vision is spiritual, we see in this prohibition that which has often taken place in history, namely, the silencing of God’s true witnesses and the interdict against their liberty to preach the Word of God? The nonconformists in England and the Covenanters in Scotland after the death of Cromwell and the restoration of the Stuarts, were forbidden to “buy and sell’ under pain of imprisonment (often, of death). The nonconformists were forced to meet in secret, betrayed often by informers, imprisoned like Bunyan and Baxter, or tortured and slain in Scotland when apprehended at field conventicles. The history of the Church contains many such examples and contemporary history bears some terrifying indications of worse to come in our own day.
Our good friends of the Futurist persuasion, with their fascinating and thrilling best-selling books, persist in their horror stories of days now supposed to be impending when for a very brief period of time (say three and a half years at most) dissenters will be prohibited from engaging in commercial transactions! Sensationalism is always preferred to honest and sober exposition. The fact that many good men are already in prison, or are interdicted from preaching the gospel, in many parts of the world, means nothing at all to writers who cannot or will not be persuaded that the Apocalypse is a spiritual book, intended to be spiritually understood, and that buying and selling (in the Bible sense) has a much more significant meaning than that of supermarket shopping.
The Lollards of Britain and Europe, following the towering testimony of John Wycliffe, knew what it was, 200 years before the Reformation, to challenge the Roman Beast when they were forbidden to buy and sell in the Gospel market. The penalty they paid for their faithful daring was high, and illustrated the stark significance of our Book of Revelation as the chart of the Church’s warfare against sin and Satan. And was not the saintly John himself lying under interdict against preaching the gospel, at the very time he was writing these words in his Book? From his isle of exile he sent forth this warning to those whom Caesar had forbidden to “buy and sell” because they would not wear his mark, and they understood the message; they were the witnesses clothed in sackcloth who testified even unto death in the street of the great city of this world:
“And it was given unto him (the Beast) to make war with the saints and to overcome them, and power was given him over all kindreds, and tongues, and nations. And all that dwell upon the earth shall worship him, whose names are not written in the book of life of the Lamb slain, from the foundation of the earth”. (Verses 7-8)
The Church overcomes by being overcome, even as Christ overcame by yielding His life into the hands of the enemy. Here is the patience and faith of the saints (v.10).
THE ENIGMA OF ANTICHRIST - PERSON OR SYSTEM?
We dismiss all idea that the Antichrist is a person. If this be the case then his only relevance to divine history must be insignificant seeing that it must be limited to the lifetime of one man, whereas the Church has had to contend with the Antichristian tyranny and opposition over many ages. The solemn warning of the apostle Paul of the coming of a MAN OF SIN who should embody all opposition against God and truth in the exercise of ‘all power and lying wonders’ (see 2 Thess. 2) was followed by the yet more imminent warnings of the apostle John (writing some 30 years after Paul): “Ye have heard that antichrist should come, and even now are there many antichrists; whereby we know that it is the last time”
(1 John 2:18 - see also v.22; chap. 4:3 and 2 John 7). There is also the warning of Christ Himself in Matt. 24:24: “There shall arise false Christs and false prophets, and shall shew great signs and wonders; insomuch that if it were possible they shall deceive the very elect”. History has produced many of such vintage in every generation.
But why should Paul and John speak of this great apparition of error and deceit in enigmatic terms? Why should the Book of Revelation draw such a cartoon of what was to come in terms of a fabulous Beast with seven heads and ten horns, and his ally as a Beast with dragon’s voice and the horns of a harmless lamb? Why not speak plainly of the thing as it is, rather than permit such a confusion as now exists in the current interpretations? We reply that from the beginning these things have been hidden from the wise and prudent and revealed unto babes. This is the manner of prophecy. The prerogative of faith must not be over-ridden. It is more important to believe than to see. If the Lord, and Paul, and John, had spoken openly of such events as these, there would have been no room for faith and patience. And this is exactly the pit into which our unwary prophetical interpreters have fallen. Mr. Lindsey of USA for example, writes a series of books, which have brought to him an enormous reputation and (be it said) an equally handsome monetary reward, by telling us almost as though reading the morning newspaper (his own words by the way) exactly what is going to happen at any moment now, yet assuring us in the same sentence, and with the same impression of infallibility, that it really does not concern the Church anyway - we shall be safely away in glory before the events of his books begin to come to pass.
Of what use therefore to the Church is the enigmatical prophecy of Revelation? It is because prophecy is enigmatic and known only by the event, that the people of God await with patience the unknown hour of their deliverance, and put their trust in a sovereign Lord who has already overcome the world, and who has given to His people on earth to endure for a while, to resist Satan, not to be dismayed when appalling trials and struggles come upon them, but to endure as seeing Him who is invisible.
“Watch therefore, for ye know not what hour your Lord doth come .... Be ye also ready, for at such a time as ye think not the Son of man cometh....”
That is the manner of prophecy. Even the crucifixion and the resurrection, the greatest prophetical events of all, though (to us with hindsight) the plainest of all prophecies, were not understood until the events of that Last Week unlocked the mystery of all mysteries (see Luke 29:21).
Prophecy prepares the soul of the believer for the final deliverance and reinforces faith all down the line but it does not permit us to know the times and the seasons, for that would make faith void and relieve us of the all-important last word of the Lord upon the matter – “What I say unto you I say unto all ...WATCH.” (Mark 13:37). Mr. Lindsey and his friends (including all who have said the same things for more than 100 years past) cannot use this word ‘Watch’ as the Lord used it, because they teach that Christ is mainly speaking of those things which shall take place in some fragment of time AFTER the history of the Church is over and done with. The modern doctrine of the Secret Rapture of the Saints 1,000 years before the end of time has paralysed all prophecy.
CHRISTIAN CREDULITY
There is really no limit to the credulity of the Christian public in its appetite for prophetical sensation. How fascinating to think of the Mark of the Beast being traced by laser beam on the foreheads of every living soul (almost) on the face of the earth: We have before us as we write, pretended photographs of persons already furnished with identity numbers on their foreheads (one can do almost anything with photography we are told). Like the 666 supposed to have been the number on a London policeman’s helmet, not so long since presented to the Pope by members of the Roman Catholic Police Guild (of which we have a treasured photographic record) purporting to prove that the Pope is antichrist. In fairness to the Pope it should be pointed out that it is impossible for anyone to make out from the photograph what number, if any, is on the helmet, and moreover someone forgot to tell us that the London ‘bobby’ does not carry his number on his helmet anyway - nor does any policeman we know about in any police force throughout the length and breadth of the British Isles! The number is always on his shoulder or his collar.
Apparently in this world lying deceptions are not the property of the devil alone. Some of those propagated by friends of ours are equally open to censure. Prophetical theory which seems almost naturally to produce deceits of this nature, ought to be viewed by all our friends with extreme caution.
The Mark of the Beast is found only on the invisibility of the soul. The number 666 we have shown is a number discerned only by ‘him who has understanding’ - and that understanding has a great deal to do with comparing scripture with scripture and not running to the daily newspaper for a commentary upon prophecy.
ANTICHRIST 2,000 YEARS OLD
We conclude that Antichrist is not a person - he is too long-lived for that and has been with us (according to John) already for nigh upon 2,000 years. He is the power of Satan organised into a kingdom of darkness and error, superstition and cruelty, which masquerades as Christ’s kingdom. In the course of history antichrist has taken on many forms and many disguises, but always he is the same antichrist. Is he the Roman Catholic Church? Yes and no. Is he the Pope? Yes and no. There have been good and holy popes. The Church of Rome has thrown up from time to time great men who have lived and died within its communion. Dr. Staupitz, who led Luther into the light, remained at his post as Vicar General of the Augustinians in Saxony, until his time was at an end. Luther never left the Church of Rome - it was Rome which cast him out. From the bosom of the Roman communion have arisen some of the greatest and most enlightened men in history. Long before the Reformation men like Anselm enlightened the world with such works of exposition as “Cur Deus Homo” – “Why God Became Man” - and the world was never quite the same afterward. Who would deny Dante, and his immortal poem, “The Divine Comedy” a place in Christian history of the highest honour, rivaled only by John Bunyan centuries after? There have been Popes who were true pastors, and we may not overlook that remarkable time in north Germany, centuries before Luther and the Reformation, when Tauler, Suso, and Meister Ekhardt poured their light upon the Rhineland, or in Holland where the saintly Jan Ruysbroek sent abroad his young men (of whom Thomas a’ Kempis was one) to pray, write or preach and bring comfort to multitudes of ordinary common people (whom the Lord loves for He was one of them). Nor may we overlook those godly weavers and artisans of those forgotten times, who cared for the sick and buried the dead, and taught the gospel to the hungry and the sad. There was Wycliffe in England whose Lollards taught the Word of God to the peasants when the great folk of England knew it not. There was John of Wessel in the Rhineland, the “morning star” of the Reformation, who died near the time that Luther was born. And there was Luther himself, who in the days of print found and published the little book known as THEOLOGIA GERMANICA in which the spiritual element of the gospel was clearly expounded, though no-one knows who wrote it. Luther said he owed more to that book than to any other, saving the Bible and Saint Augustine.
Antichrist is wherever the Church is, and the Church is always where the truth of the Word of God is still available. The kingdom of Christ is invisible. We cannot say of it, Lo, here it is, or there. “The kingdom of God is within you”, and is often found where least expected or is absent when we are sure we have it. Where the Word of God is preached - there is the Church. There has always been salvation inside the Church of Rome because the foundations are still there - as in the Apostles’ Creed, the doctrine of the Incarnation, the Holy Trinity, and the redemptive character of Christ's death. However over laden with priest craft and such blasphemies as the doctrine of the Mass, and priestly absolution, yet there remains, in regions untouched by the great Reformation, areas of piety such as flourished in the Middle Ages amongst Beguines and Beghards, the pious and charitable Brethren of the Common Lot, or (as in post-Reformation France), the Jansenists, with Pascal and Fenelon and Madame Guyon. Our own Archbishop
Leighton, onetime of Dunblane and later of Glasgow, whose reprinted works are now treasured in many an evangelical library, was himself converted amongst the Jansenists and strangely became Episcopalian although his father was a saintly nonconformist who had his nose slit by the authorities for “unauthorized” preaching.
The archbishop seemed to be in a strange, some thought a false, position, when the Presbyterian Covenanters were being hurried to the gallows in Edinburgh, or to the agonies of the thumbscrews. What was Leighton doing in the ranks of the oppressor? Behold the mysterious providence of God. This great Jansenist was sent in advance to save much people alive, for he used his power in the archiepiscopal diocese of Glasgow to forbid the arrest and persecution of the people of God throughout the region of his jurisdiction, receiving the thanks of neither party, but answerable to heaven alone for the good which he did.
But if the Church Invisible still lingered on down the centuries in the papal regions - and lingers there still - what shall we say of the Churches of Protestantism? The persecution of nonconformists on either side of the Scottish border in the seventeenth century was not a Roman persecution. Protestantism showed that Rome had no monopoly of cruelty and error. Our Mr. Spurgeon once said that all churches had been persecutors at one time or another - that is, all except the Baptists. His huge Baptist congregation thundered their applause, and when the storm of enthusiasm abated he quietly added – “For the Baptists were never in a position to persecute anybody:” Alas, we are not sure whether the Baptists in Britain and America today merit entirely the dubiety with which Mr. Spurgeon concluded his sentence. One hundred years on have seen many changes.
Intolerance is found even in those regions dedicated to freedom of conscience, and no doubt there will be many among our American readers who will read again, with consciences bowed in agony, John Greenleaf Whittier’s lines on how the Quaker women were whipped, stripped to the waist in the bitterness of a cruel winter, from Dover, New England, dragged at a cart’s tail, from one jurisdiction to another, till one humane constable refused the edict in his jurisdiction. Mr. Spurgeon, as usual, was right. All are guilty.
Cruelty and intolerance, exclusivism, error, blasphemy, are hardly the prerogative of any one party or church in the world. It behooves all to walk with deep humility and speak the truth in love. The boundaries of the Church and of Truth are not visible to human wisdom. Antichrist is not one but many, as John said long ago – “Even now are there many antichrists'”. The bounds of the Church are seen only from the Throne of God. The Church is where Christ dwells in the humble and contrite heart - and nowhere else. It transcends all earthly, national, or ecclesiastical boundaries. It is vain to compare Church with Church or system with system. It is vain for one to say, “Ours is the only true and scriptural church; ours is the only true and scriptural order”. History proves that the Lord has used all systems and discarded all. Somehow He has managed with all varieties of ecclesiastical attire - or none at all that is recognisable. He is not bound to our orders or lack of them. But one thing is sure; He dwells with those who are of humble and contrite heart, to revive the spirit of the humble.
Let all beware – “THERE ARE EVEN NOW MANY ANTICHRISTS WHEREBY WE KNOW THAT IT IS THE LAST TIME”. And if it is so, as John our companion in tribulation and in the kingdom and patience of Jesus Christ declares, what then is the answer to antichristian error? Hear the enlightened John once more:
“And now I beseech thee lady, not as though I wrote a new commandment unto thee, but that which we had from the beginning, that we love one another. And this is love, that we walk after his commandments. This is the commandment, That as ye have heard from the beginning, ye should walk in it.” (2 John 5-6)
Love without the guidelines of truth is not love at all, but mere sentiment. Truth without love is equally a lie. He who is Himself Eternal Love also says of Himself, “I am the truth”.
The errors of Rome are antichristian but the Pope is not antichrist. The system over which he rules may be evil but no man can ever be more than the pawn and the tool of antichrist. And so may we. We may even go so far as to say that wherever the Church is, there is antichrist, for certainly this was the whole point of John’s warnings in his epistles. Nevertheless, antichrist exalts himself into a visible system and seeks to dominate the Church in order to destroy her. After all, we are warned in Rev. 11 verses 1 and 2, that if the Church is the temple of God (with its altar and those who worship there), the precinct sacred to heathenism is the forecourt of that temple. It is given to the gentiles, says John - and gentilism is a synonym for heathenism or paganism. That Rome by reason of history and geography is the titular head of gentilism there can be no doubt and the Roman Church beyond all question, has imported its external image largely from the paganism which it supplanted when Caesar fell never to rise again. It incorporated Roman idolatry (by giving the gods of Rome a new, baptised name), along with its ghostly army of priests, monks and nuns.
Here we repeat (what we have recorded before), the words of the philosopher Hobbes, “If a man consider the original of this great ecclesiastical dominion (the Papal ecclesiastical empire) he will easily perceive that the papacy is no other than the ghost of the deceased Roman Empire sitting crowned upon the grave thereof. For so did the Papacy startup on a sudden out of the ruins of that heathen power”. Or as Dr. J. S. Whale more recently put it, “In historic Catholicism, apostolic Christianity has come to terms with Paganism, largely by incorporating it”.
THE PROTESTANT ANTICHRIST
To what extent the ‘court which is without the temple’ (Rev. 11:1-2) is always found historically in close juxtaposition to the temple proper with its sacred altar, we leave others to determine, but there is every reason to believe that they are never very far apart. In other words, wherever the Church is found, there will also be discovered ere long, the substance of the apostasy. Rome is surely the greatest historical apostasy, but the state of Protestantism today is no better if not worse. The paganism of Rome is surely matched by that which so far Rome will not tolerate, but which has almost entirely destroyed the churches of the Reformation. We refer to the fearful inroads of Rationalism in the historic areas of the Reformation. If the pope wears the garments of the Paganism which preceded him, what shall be said of those churches which began with a glorious return to the Word of God but now deny the divine revelation almost with contempt. Anglicanism in England tolerates a Bishop who makes insufferable and unholy suggestions regarding the human nature of our Lord Jesus Christ (as though He were not God manifest in the flesh, conceived by the Holy Ghost and born of the Virgin Mary). The Baptist Union of Great Britain has not yet disrobed a college principal who denies the deity of Christ. Scottish Presbyterianism (save for such heroic remnant bodies as the Free Presbyterians, and the Free Church of Scotland), has almost completely surrendered belief in the Bible as being wholly and entirely the Word of God. What is happening in the great Protestant churches of the United States is best known by those who live there and who for the most part have had to leave the heritage of their fathers because of the greatness of the apostasy which has seized upon that inheritance. The evil is worldwide. Nothing quite like it has ever happened in history. Paganism has returned to the earth in fullest pride, and the effects thereof in human society - violence and vice, anarchy and greed, godlessness and its companions, sodomy, pleasure-seeking, vanity, cruelty -are creating anew that state of affairs last recorded in the days of the Flood: “The earth was filled with violence, and every imagination of the thoughts of man's heart was only evil continually”. (Genesis 6)
It is not only the people of the Lord whom Satan succeeds in oppressing. The children of this world should be warned. “Woe to the inhabiters of the earth and of the sea” describes the worldly multitudes outside the kingdom of Christ.
Serving Satan does not make him any the less the worst and most feared of taskmasters. He has an inveterate hatred of mankind as such, and deceives only to destroy. The awful fate of the Roman world when the power of the Caesars began to decay is warning enough of the fate which awaits even those who have been the instruments of Satan’s hatred of the Church. They will never be spared. Satan is the head of all the subversive movements and enterprises of the human race, but he leads only to destroy as we of the twentieth century have witnessed in two world wars and are now witnessing in the revival of Satanic cruelty in our society - violence, murder, rapine, destruction and cruelty.
Satan is winning the battle for the human mind, in church, university, the science laboratory, in the theatre and In the Forum, in science, art and poetry, in music and letters. He knows that he has but a short time and goes about with great fury to destroy many. “Woe unto the inhabiters of the earth and of the sea, for the devil is come down unto you, having great wrath, because he knoweth that he bath but a short time”. (Rev. 12:12)
The subtle effects of atheistic science are all too apparent in our time. Who ever anticipated in the complacency of the nineteenth century that within three generations the doctrine of creation by evolution would have subverted almost the entire world, destroying the very foundations of moral behaviour? If creation made itself by accident there can be no such thing as morality. The removal of the concept of a divine and holy plan in creation, replacing it by a mindless and purposeless spasm of Nature, effectually destroys all moral law, for one cannot have righteousness without a righteous Creator. We are now seeing the Dead Sea fruits of this philosophy, and the hearts of the sons of men are beginning to fail them for fear.
THE DIVINE PARADOX OF HISTORY
But the wisdom of God is in control. Though our futurist expositors, no doubt with good intentions, have banished the Church from prophecy and created an unbridgeable gap in the last 2,000 years of history, those who have kept a level and spiritual poise in these matters will perceive that if the Book of Revelation is the chart and compass of the Church (and it is), then this can only be a fact of the divine sovereignty. God foreknows because He predestinates, and there can be no retreat from that. By no other means could even Almighty God inform us of the future (most of which is now past and verifiable) but by the fact that He has planned and determined that future. The paradox between His sovereignty and the full responsibility of man or devil for their acts, cannot be resolved this side of the Judgment Seat, and we must await in faith that which the day shall declare. But it is sure that the Church is unerringly guided by the Lord in every detail of her long and often agonising pilgrimage. Just as surely as Herod and Pontius Pilate with the gentiles and the people of Israel gathered together at the Crucifixion of the Saviour, “to do what God’s hand and counsel had determined before to be done” (Acts 4.27-28), so sure it is that the omnipotent God has all things under His sublime control and even directs by His Sovereignty the rebellious forces which combine to perform the greatest of all crimes. One of our great Reformers declared, “If Christ died not by the will of God, where is our redemption?” Nothing was so surely and clearly determined in the divine purposes, from the beginning of creation, as the Atoning Death of the Son of God, yet there is no questioning of the guilt of those who did the deed. “The Son of Man goeth as it is written of Him, but woe unto him by whom the Son of Man is betrayed”. (Mark 14:21)
So the Church prayed (as already quoted) – “Of a truth against thy holy child Jesus whom thou hast anointed, both Herod, and Pontius Pilate with the gentiles and the people of Israel, gathered together, to do whatsoever thy hand and counsel determined before to be done”.
It is the consolation of the Church that all her woes and sufferings are under the divine omnipotence, and she is not at the mercy of evil powers.
The Sovereign purpose of God in redemption must be fulfilled for redemption is the key to the understanding of all things. It is the secret of the life of the Godhead, underlying the events of all time and all creation. The Lord’s great prayer In John 17 clearly proves this. Yet sovereignty must not be so interpreted as to excuse sin or make the holy God responsible for unbelief and impenitence. “The Redeemer’s tears wept over lost souls” (John Howe’s great phrase in one of the greatest of all sermonic utterances from the Puritan Age) show that to mourn over the fate of Jerusalem (Luke 19:41-44) is in perfect consistency with the divine purpose that by means of man’s unbelief and wickedness the act of redemption should be performed, and a greater good than otherwise could have been realised, should be brought to pass. But let all men beware of fitting such a paradox into their theological systems. The mind of God is known only to God Himself. Only God can comprehend God. “I am that I am” He declares to Moses. Let us not impiously seek to act as judges of the hiddenness of the Divine Being.
The Apocalypse, therefore, is the unveiling of God’s programme in bringing to pass His infallible purposes in the redemption of the Church and the final ruin of Satan. If it is a Via Dolorosa, so was His road to the Cross. It is the way the Master went. Should not the servant tread it still?
THE GREEK ORTHODOX CHURCH
It is not possible to conclude this survey without reference to the historic Orthodox, or Greek, Church. This Church, which Alexander Whyte justifiably described as ‘the most stagnant church in Christendom’ differs in little else from its Roman sister than its refusal to accept the Pope as its head, and its academic principle of avoiding three-dimensional idolatry by the curious device of sanctifying two-dimensional pictures, called sacred IKONS.
The centre of this great church was in Constantinople (Byzantium) where reigned the Byzantine emperors who claimed to be the true inheritors of the purple of the Caesars. Byzantium fell to the Turks in the fifteenth century and one providential consequence of this great event in history was the escape of Byzantine scholars and theologians to the west, carrying with them the precious Greek manuscripts of the New Testament of which they had been the faithful custodians for many centuries. Copies came into the hands of Erasmus and from them he produced that Greek text from which was completed what has come to be known as the Received Text. This formed the basis on which the Reformation was built. It was one of the chief means by which the Papal dominion in Europe fell and the gospel was released in all that spiritual dynamism which transformed all subsequent history.
The Orthodox Church survives in the East, and it became the established church in Russia. Outwardly it appears to be stagnant and corrupt, but despite an intolerant and often corrupt priesthood, profound theologians and dedicated men have arisen therein who bear witness to the glory of Christ and the salvation of souls. “Father” John Sergieff of Kronstadt attended the Czar Alexander III on his deathbed, and (so far as man can tell) safely brought his Royal friend to the gates of eternal life. “He died as only a true Christian can die” was the verdict of this pious man, after the Czar’s death in October 1894. When John Sergieff’s writings were compiled and issued In English they were dedicated by the translator to Queen Victoria who arranged for one of the finest chants from the Burial Service of the Russian Orthodox Church to be sung in English at the Chapel in Windsor Castle, on the occasion of the Czar’s death.
These interesting details may not be of significance in such a commentary as ours, except to illustrate that wherever is preserved the true faith of Christ crucified and risen again, as the solid and only hope of sinful man, however overlaid with sacramentalism and multiplication of minor mediators and rituals, earnest souls, whether high or low in this world’s estimation, may rest their faith and hope in the Incarnate God who “By himself purged our sins and is set down at the right hand of the majesty on high” (Heb. 1:3). The remnants of the Protestant Reformation may do much worse. The Reformation, in escaping from Rome, has not succeeded in escaping from the subtlety of Satan. At least, the Orthodox Church preserved intact those precious manuscripts which launched the Reformation, even though the descendants of the Reformation are now busily and destructively engaged in the ungodly task of producing new versions of the Holy Scriptures, the one unifying feature of all of them being their repudiation of those very manuscripts which broke the power of Rome and gave us the Authorised Version. Most of the ‘scholars’ engaged in this nefarious task of confusion and error, are united, almost in one voice, in rooting out or otherwise interfering with the authentic texts which are key statements in the New Testament on the doctrine of the INCARNATION. With dangerous equivocation they raise the question, “WHO IS THIS JESUS OF NAZARETH? WAS HE REALLY GOD INCARNATE?” For our part we feel we have got to be friends with all who are friends of the vital creeds of the Early Church, and regard as foes of the truth all who in any wise weaken the testimony of such fundamental texts as 1 John 5:7, 1 Tim. 3:16, Romans 9:5, and who juggle with such all-important sections as that relating to
(see our pamphlet on this last-named, which ‘Reformed’ editors refused to publish).
AN APPEAL TO OUR FUTURIST BRETHREN
Antichrist always lurks in the purlieus of the historic Church, represented by the temple court which surrounds the sacred edifice itself (Rev. 11, v.1 and 2). Our brethren who write such best-sellers as “The Late Great Planet Earth” might do much better if they warned us from Holy Scripture of the true antichrist who rages now in our forecourt and who is never so pleased as when he can induce good men to reassure us that we have nothing to fear: we shall all be safely away in heaven before this foul apparition appears. And all the time the enemy is roaring in the midst of our congregations, setting up his ensigns for signs.
“A man was famous according as he had lifted up axes upon the thick trees.
But now they break down the carved work thereof at once with axes and hammers.
They have cast fire into thy sanctuary, they have defiled by casting down the dwelling place of thy name to the ground.”
“O let not the oppressed return ashamed: let the poor and needy praise thy name.
Arise, O God, plead thine own cause: remember how the foolish man reproacheth thee daily.
Forget not the voice of thine enemies: the tumult of those that rise up against thee increaseth continually.” (See Psalm 74)
Much more might be said upon our great thirteenth chapter of Revelation, but we would plead with our brethren who write books and who preach sensational sermons on the coming age of frightfulness, ignoring the facts of life as they appear startlingly before us today, and the very real perils which beset the way of the true Church - we plead with them to turn their attention to the facts we have endeavoured here to set before them. It maybe they are mistaken. No doubt they will turn that suggestion back to ourselves, but the consequences of their mistake in prophesying events which on their own showing are ENTIRELY IRRELEVANT TO THE CHURCH EITHER NOW OR IN THE COMING DAYS is surely far more dangerous than ours when we speak of present-day facts, so fraught with significance to the people of God and to the manner of our preaching.
THE E.E.C.
One of the latest follies of the futuristic school is to equate the European Common Market with Revelation 13 (and cognate chapters) as evidence that we are living in the days when the ten kings of this chapter who (they say) are due to arrive to prepare the way for antichrist, are just about assembled now in Europe. Our friends however are appallingly ignorant of history. Of the nine present members of the European Economic Community something like half were never part of the Roman Empire and are therefore disqualified from the prophecy. We refer to Denmark, Germany, Holland, and Ireland. Another of them, the tiny state of Luxemburg, never had an independent existence till modern times. When Augustus Caesar created Imperial Rome in the days of the incarnation of Christ, he drew his finger across the map of Europe and set the bounds of the empire on the Rivers Rhine and Danube, hence excluding all north of that line. Scotland too, was never part of the Empire. Hadrian’s Wall will speak to that. We greatly fear that our friends are woefully ignorant of the elementary facts of history, and so of course is their readership. It is also a curious form of prophetic interpretation which is compelled to exclude the United States of America (European in origin) from Bible events of the modern age – especially when most of our Futurist writers are located there!
Sola Scriptura 
