---

(Revelation, Chapters vi.-viii.)

"God Almighty! King of nations! earth Thy footstool, heaven Thy throne! Thine the greatness, power, and glory, Thine the kingdom, Lord, alone! Life and death are in Thy keeping, and Thy will ordaineth all: From the armies of Thy heavens to an unseen insect's fall.

"Reigning, guiding, all-commanding, ruling myriad worlds of light; Now exalting, now abasing, none can stay Thy hand of might! Working all things by Thy power, by the counsel of Thy will. Thou art God! enough to know it, and to hear Thy word: 'Be still!'

"In Thy sovereignty rejoicing, we Thy children bow and praise, For we know that kind and loving, just and true, are all Thy ways. While Thy heart of sovereign mercy, and Thy arm of sovereign might, For our great and strong salvation in Thy sovereign grace unite."

-- FRANCES RIDLEY HAVERGAL.

The Area of the Storm.

Goodness arouses evil. Faithfulness to Christ stirs opposition. This is a commonplace. A piece of white-hot metal plunged into cold water makes a great fuss. Two areas of sharply different temperatures in the atmosphere above us coming suddenly together make a storm.

Purity entering an atmosphere of impurity and insisting on staying, and on keeping pure, creates a lively disturbance. The tempter was aroused to his subtlest effort when Jesus appeared. There is no such demoniac activity recorded as when Jesus walked among men.

So crowning a king arouses opposition, if there be opposition. And the active taking of the reins of government has intensified the opposition when it was strong enough to make a stand. The striking illustration of this in the Bible is King David. After Saul's death the men of Judah anointed David king. That was the signal for an immediate attack by the chief of the forces of Saul's house. And this was succeeded by a long war, before David was acknowledged as king over all Israel. The clearing-up storm in his realm lasted a good while before good weather came.

Here in this Revelation scene we have been looking at our Lord Jesus is represented as stepping forward to take possession of His realm. It is natural to expect a storm. This will be a signal to the opposition to rally all its power. But there can be no question about the outcome of such a set-to. That storm proves to be a clearing-up storm in the realm. It is to be followed by such fine moral weather as has not been known before. But the storm itself proves to be a terrific one for the earth while it lasts.

The greater part of this little end-book is taken up with a description of that storm. But before we turn to this book itself and its storm, we want to get our bearings a bit, so as to understand better what is here. Revelation is the knot in the end of a big bunch of threads. We shall understand the knot better by knowing more about the threads before they are tied into the knot.

The storm area proves to be very large. It takes in the whole earth. The Bible is a big book in its outlook and grasp. It deals with the whole earth, and the whole race. The thoughtful Bible student comes to have a broad outlook, as well as a close lookout about his own front and back doors.

It is fascinating to study the geography of the Bible. We talk about the world growing smaller. That refers of course to the rapidity of transit. It is only within a few hundred years that we have learned of the earth being round. The Bible map includes practically the whole world as we have come to know it.

The centre of the world as seen on this map may seem a little surprising. We Americans feel that the centre of things is here. The Englishman knows that it is in London; and lately the Germans have had the same exclusive sort of knowledge about Berlin. The Chinese has long called his country "the Middle Kingdom," in the sense of its being the central kingdom about which the rest of the world revolves. But here the centre is seen to be on the boundary line, practically, between Orient and Occident, reaching out an embracing arm to each.

We have a broad division of the earth into East and West. The differences between the two, in civilization, mode of thought, religion, language, and so on, are so radical as to make it seem that there was no point of contact. At least this has been emphasized much by western writers on the East. We are disturbed just now here in the far West over the Oriental, Chinese Japanese and Indian crossing the far boundary line between Orient and Occident and coming into the United States and Canada.

Yet East and West have always overlapped at the middle boundary line. There is a great mixture of races in the strip where the eastern edge of the West and the western edge of the East come together. It is the strip running roughly north and south where Russia's western border and Turkey's touch Germany and Austria and Greece, including the never-at-rest Balkan Peninsula. Constantinople sits on the dividing line between East and West, with the worst of both civilizations within her confines. Here the hemispheres touch and their life currents intermingle and flow together.

Scientific research seems to find good evidence that all our European civilization, which of course means American too, may have been brought over by Eastern immigrants from central Asia long ages ago, Asia coming into Europe. Perhaps we Westerners would not despise the Easterners so contemptuously and patronizingly if we knew how much we are probably indebted to them for our civilization as well as for our Hebrew and Christian faith, our Bible, and the Christian restraining bulwarks of our common life.

The old common point of contact between Orient and Occident was the strip of land forming the western edge of the Orient at the eastern end of the Mediterranean. Palestine has been for centuries the common roadway of all nations, East and West. No bit of earth has been so tramped and trampled by the feet of all nations and races. This has been the battlefield of the nations through long centuries. The ends of the earth have met here. It is interesting that the waters that wash its western shore are called the Mediterranean Sea, that is, the middle-of-the-earth sea.

Here then is the centre of the map. It is the centre of all things in the Bible. And it has proven to be at the centre of human action through history, attested by the very name given to the chief body of water there.

Jerusalem, the capital city of this Palestine strip, was the centre of a world power in the early ages. It has been the world capital. And it has in turn been fought over and conquered by every world power. No city has been a world centre of action during as long a stretch of time, and to as many different nations.

Out from this centre the action of the Bible reaches north to Russia, south to Africa (Ethiopia), east to China (Sinim, Isaiah xlix.12), and west to Spain. That practically includes the world of our day. America is of course merely a transplanted seedling of Europe.

Those great Hebrew leaders called prophets had a world outlook. They were world messengers. It is intensely interesting to take a piece of paper, and pencil a rough map of the nations named in their messages, notably Isaiah,[107] Jeremiah,[108] Ezekiel,[109] and Daniel.[110] Beginning at Jerusalem and Israel they reach first this way, then that, up and down, back and forth, until the whole world of action of that day has been touched. They were men of world size. They had a world outlook and a world message.

But then God's man always has. The world outlook of Jesus was tremendous. And every true disciple of Jesus Christ has the world outlook. Grace broadens as well as refining. It is one of the endless outworkings of sin that tends toward that narrowing provincialism which everywhere hinders so much, and so intensely.

Now in this world map in the Bible geography two cities stand out beyond all others, Jerusalem and Babylon; Jerusalem the centre of God's people and of God's plans, Babylon the centre of the opposing worldly power. These are the two outstanding cities of the Bible world.

Between these two there is an enmity and warfare that is practically continuous. Jerusalem comes to be the typical of God's people and power and kingdom. Babylon stands out likewise as typical of the power and kingdom always and innately opposed to God and to His people. The conflict between the two seems irrepressible and irreconcilable. It is never out of view.

Babylon has been the centre, under successive dynasties, of a world empire, including not only part of Asia, but reaching west to Europe and south to Africa. It sat practically in the connecting strip of Orient and Occident, ruling over both. In the dim dawn of history a God-ignoring, and so really a God-defying and man-exalting movement, centred in the city called Babel. And from that time on that city, and its successor Babylon, have seemed as though possessed with a spirit of antagonism to God and His people. It is as though it were the earthly headquarters of the blasphemous unseen evil forces.

This is a simple bit of geography lesson in the Old Testament. This is the map that lies ever open in these older pages, with its two capital cities marked large. And this indicates the area of the storm, and the two central points where its outburst will centre.

Studying the Weather Forecast.

It is interesting to find a weather forecast of this storm. The old Hebrew prophets were close students of national and world-wide weather conditions, and much given to making forecasts of impending storms. Even in the New Testament there is this distinct prophetic or foretelling strain running throughout. The father of John the Baptist is told of his son's birth; and Mary, of the unusual birth of her divine Son. The disciples are told of the coming of the Holy Spirit. And Agabus tells of a great famine coming. In these instances the fulfilment follows soon after the event is foretold.

The destruction of Jerusalem, foretold by Christ, had at least a part of its fulfilment in the terrible Titus siege of 70 A.D. Our Lord said that He would return to earth in great glory, and that there would come a great tribulation to all the earth, and repeated the old prophecy of a restoration of the Hebrew kingdom. These have not yet occurred.

But the book of the Revelation is distinctively the prophetic book of the New Testament. It deals almost entirely with events that are yet to come. It would be natural that it would fit into the prophetic parts of the Old Testament. So that one who is somewhat familiar with the prophetic books of the Old naturally comes more intelligently to this prophetic book of the New.

It is true that most of us have a sense of bewilderment about prophecy. We seem to feel that it requires great scholarship and profound study, and that an understanding of it is not possible to the common run of Christians. And so we largely leave it out as not understandable.

Yet prophecy is simply God's plans for the future, together with a revelation of other events which are not in His plan, but which He sees will happen in the future. In it He tells us what He means us to understand. And more than this, our understanding will have practical bearing on our attitude toward evil and compromise. It will affect our faith, making it steadier, especially when evil seems triumphant and overbearing. It will make our prayer more intelligent and confident.

There are certain things we all know. As we read back into these pages we know that the break-up of the Jewish nation, which began with the Babylonian Captivity, came to a terrible climax in a complete break-up after the rejection of Christ. We know that the other nations commonly called Gentiles (i.e., the nations) have had supremacy in the earth. Israel was at one time acknowledged as the great world power, with many subject nations, in Solomon's time.

But Gentile supremacy begins back in the time of these Old Testament pages. There is to-day practically no belief that this will ever be changed, except perhaps by a stray Jew here and there, who still holds to his old Bible, and except by those Christians who discern God's plan, and believe both in Him and in it.

In the absence of an understanding of that plan of God, it has been common to apply all the glowing prophetic Hebrew promises to the Church. The result has been that Israel and the Kingdom have been confused in our minds with the Church. And this has become the commonplace in the common Church consciousness.

It is quite possible for the person of average good sense to get something of a simple, broad grasp of the prophetic books. It involves reading repeatedly so as to get familiar with the contents, and rapidly so as not to get too much absorbed in details.

It is needful to use a common-sense interpretation in getting at the meaning. It is a simple law that one principle of interpretation should be applied uniformly and consistently to all parts of any one document. If I say arbitrarily, "this part is rhetorical; it doesn't mean just what it says, but something else; and this other part means just what it says," clearly I am reading my own ideas and prejudices into the book.

It is much slower, and takes more pains and patience, to keep at it until all parts gradually clear up to us, first this bit, then that, until part fits part, and all hang together. But there is great fascination in it, and one's reverence for this revelation of God's Word grows deeper.

Of course there is rhetorical language here as everywhere. "The Lord is my shepherd" is clearly rhetorical. For God is not a shepherd, and I am not a sheep, but a man. But under this simple, clearly rhetorical language the tender, personal relationship God bears to me is beautifully expressed. That such language is rhetorical is clear to every mind alike.

And there is a picture language here, such as speaking of purity of character as "white garments." The honest, earnest, unprejudiced seeker after truth quickly recognizes these, and learns to become skilled in discerning what is meant. We come to see that Israel means Israel, not the Church. Jerusalem means that city in Judea, and so on.

Of course it is needful that there be an openmindedness, a humble, teachable spirit, willing to accept the real truth, no matter how it may shake up one's prejudices and prearranged schemes of thought. And, above all, there should be a constant prayerfulness of spirit, to learn just what our God is seeking to have us know. Of course there are depths here for the scholarly, profound minds. But we ordinary folk can get a simple, clear grasp of God's plan and revealed insight into the future if we go at it in this thoughtful, prayerful way. And it will be a great help to us to do so.

Three Great Unfulfilled Events.

Let us take a swift glance at these prophetic books of the Old Testament. It helps to remember the natural way in which these prophetic books grew up. These prophets were preachers and teachers. Here are some people going up to the temple service one day in Jerusalem. As they get near the temple they notice a little knot of people standing yonder at a corner listening to a man talking earnestly. Isaiah, fresh from the presence of God, is talking out of a burning heart to the crowd.

A visitor from another part of the land says curiously to his companion, "What's that?" The other replies: "Oh, it's only Isaiah talking to the people. He is a good man, that Isaiah, a well-meaning, earnest man, but a little too intense, I fear." And they pass on to the temple service. By and by Isaiah stops. The moving congregation scatters. He slips quietly down to his house, and under the Spirit's holy, brooding presence writes down a part of what he has been saying. So there grew up the rolls to which his name is attached.

In some such simple, natural way these prophetic books grew up, always under the Holy Spirit's guidance and control. They are full of intense fire, and of the homely talk of street and market and fireside. There are two sorts of these prophets, the preachers like Elijah and Elisha and those who wrote as well as spoke, and whose names are preserved in these books.

There are seventeen of these little books. They fall easily into four groups. The first group contains those belonging in the time before the nation was exiled. It is a period of about one hundred and fifty years, roughly, beginning in the prosperous reign of Uzziah and running up to the time when the nation was taken captive to Babylon. Isaiah is the most prominent prophet of this period, and with him are Hosea, Micah, and Amos, all of whom may have been personally acquainted; and also Zephaniah and Habakkuk.

The second is the exile group, Jeremiah preaching in Judah, before and during the siege, and to the remnant left behind in the land; and Ezekiel and Daniel bearing their witness among the exiles in the foreign land.

The third group is made up of those who witnessed after the people are allowed to return to their own land again. The writer of the second part of Isaiah probably preached to the people as the opportunity came to return to Jerusalem.[111] Haggai and Zachariah stirred up the returned people to rebuild the temple. Joel and Malachi witnessed probably a little later in the same period.

The fourth is the foreign group. Obadiah sends a message to the neighbouring nation of Edom; and Jonah and Nahum are sent with messages to Nineveh. If one will try to make a picture of these people and events by reading the historical books, and then watch and listen as the prophets talk, it will do much to make these prophetic books full of the native atmosphere in which they grew up.

Now there are three things that gradually come to stand out in these prophetic books. Much of what is being said is of immediate application. It refers plainly to affairs being lived out then. Then certain things are plainly fulfilled in the coming of Christ. And again there is a great deal that clearly has never been fulfilled but is still future. It is the latter part that naturally is of intensest interest.

Now in this latter part, dealing with the future, three things stand out clear and sharp above the rest. There is to be judgment upon Israel for their iniquities. The changes on this are rung again and again. And this stands out as much in the preaching of the Captivity time, and of the Return, as before the Captivity. But in the midst of severest judgment there will be a remnant spared. The tree is cut down, but the stump is spared; and there is life in the stump. But above these there stand out these three things.

The first thing stands out big. It is the thing the nation never forgot. The believing Hebrew still clings to it. The wailers at the wall of Jerusalem to-day never forget it. It is this: there is to be a future time of great glory for the nation of Israel in their own loved land.[112] The kingdom is to be restored, but with a glory indescribably greater than ever known. This is the bright golden thread, thick and strong, running through from end to end.

It will come through that spared remnant. The old stump will put out a new shoot. It will be through the coming of a great king, who will prove to be their greatest king,[113] and will reign not only over Israel, but over all nations as tributary to Israel, with Jerusalem as the capital city both of Israel and of the whole earth.[114] At its beginning there will be a gathering of Israel from among all the nations where they have been scattered.[115] To assist these scattered pilgrims to get to their own land, the tongue of the Egyptian sea on the southwest is to be destroyed; and the waters of the Euphrates on the extreme east are to be so scattered or dried up that men can walk over dry-shod.

When the great king comes there will be genuine penitence among the people over their past sins,[116] and they will become a wholly changed people.[117] Israel will be a nation converted by the power of the Holy Spirit through the conversion of the people individually. There will be at this time a resurrection of God's people who have died.[118]

The new reign and kingdom is to be one of great spiritual enlightenment to all nations.[119] There will be everywhere a new, remarkable openmindedness to God and His truth.[120] And there will be the same visible evidence of the presence of God at Jerusalem as when the pillar of fire and cloud was with them in the wilderness. That wondrous presence-cloud is to be always in view.[121]

This sounds to our ears like the highly coloured visionary dream of some over-enthusiastic Hebrew. Yet this is a calm statement of what is found here. And be it keenly marked, it is a picture which the godly Hebrew of the old time never lost sight of. This is the first thing that stands out in these prophetic pages.

The second thing stands out distinctly. Preceding this wondrous kingdom the earth will be visited by terrible judgments.[122] There is an awfully dark shadow before the blaze of light breaks out. A terrific storm will come before the sun shines out in its new strength. All nations will combine to make war against the Jew. Their forces will be gathered at Jerusalem.[123] At the head of the coalition will be a power called Babylon.[124] There will come a terrific battle, victory for the coalition will seem assured. The sufferings of the Jews will be indescribable.

Then there will come a day never after to be forgotten. In the midst of the indescribable horrors of that battle, when things are at their worst for the Jew, then comes the deliverance. Suddenly Jehovah will appear out of the heavens, with a great company of holy ones. His feet will stand upon Mount Olivet to the east of Jerusalem. There will be a terrible earthquake, and an equally terrific shake-up of the heavenly bodies. The luminaries, sun, moon, and stars, will be darkened.[125] There will be terrible judgments visited not only upon the earth, but upon the evil spirit powers.[126] Repeated emphasis is put upon the judgment to be visited upon Babylon.

All this will sound like a veritable fairy tale to many who are not familiar with this Book of God; the unlikeliest thing imaginable. Yet this is the thing seriously set forth throughout these old prophetic pages. I have given a few references in footnotes. But these few scattered passages of themselves will not give an adequate conception of what these pages hold.

There is all the fascination of a novel, and immensely more and deeper fascination than any novel, in reading these prophetic pages repeatedly in the way already spoken of till their mere contents become somewhat familiar. Then taking paper and pencil, running through again, and drawing off patiently and carefully, item after item of these prophecies plainly not yet fulfilled, and then slowly and painstakingly put them together in what would be a simple, logical order.

It will be helpful, in reading, to remember that it is a common thing with these writers to speak of a future thing as already past. It is a bit of the intensity that sees the thing that is yet to come as already accomplished. And one should discern between the immediate thing that may likely occur in that generation and the far-distant thing. A careful noting of the language will make the difference clear.

This is the second thing that stands out, the visitation of judgments.

Then there is a third thing. This terrible visitation of judgments comes in connection with, and at the close of, a time of great persecution of the Jew by the nations. Jeremiah speaks of it as the time of Jacob's trouble,[127] and the Man of Fire tells Daniel that there will be a time of trouble such as never was since there was a nation even to that same time.[128] This persecution of the Jew, and the visitation of judgments on the earth as a deliverance from it, are connected with the setting up of the Kingdom.

These are the three things that stand dominantly out in these prophetic pages as distinctly-future, the great Jew persecution unprecedented in intensity, the visitation of terrible judgments on the earth, and the coming of a glorious kingdom. And the three are connected. We know that no events have yet taken place that at all satisfy the language used of these three connected events.

This is the simple outline of expected coming events with which the thoughtful reader of God's Word is supposed to be familiar. The reverent student of God's promises and plans and revelations would naturally have all this clear and fresh in his mind as he turns to open the pages of the prophetic book of the New Testament.

Forecast of the Great Storm.

Now it is of intense interest to note that our Lord Jesus speaks of these same three things, at much length, and with much emphasis; the persecution, the visitation of judgments, and the kingdom. It came to me as a great surprise and with startling force when I realized, after gathering out this summary from the Old Testament, that the three things that stand out so sharply there are the very things Jesus speaks of here with such fulness and emphasis.

He puts special emphasis on the time of persecution as of unprecedented horror and ferocity. He plainly indicates that this will be directed not only against the Jew, but against His own followers. Three times this talk of His on Olivet just before His death is given at much length.[129] That talk is given to a little group of Jewish disciples who have broken with the Jewish leaders, and who become the great leaders of the Church formed at Pentecost.

He speaks of that terrible experience as "great tribulation,"[130] "such as there hath not been the like from the beginning of the creation which God created until now, nor ever shall be."[131] We shall find it spoken of in this book of Revelation as "the tribulation, the great one."[132] It has come to be spoken of commonly as "the tribulation" and "the great tribulation."

With all this fresh in mind, a run back through the Old Testament brings out that it is spoken of there much more than we may have realized. The warning to Israel, at Sinai, as they made the covenant of allegiance with God, of the bitter punishment that would come if they were untrue, has seemed many times as though couched in very intense, almost extreme language.[133] But it is found to fit into these later descriptions of this great tribulation to come. That warning is repeated, in as intense words and with a greater fulness, by Moses in his series of farewell talks in the Plains of Moab,[134] and it runs through the song he left for their use.[135]

The experiences of the people of Israel in Egypt are found to be an illustration of the coming experience at the end, great persecution and suffering, then great deliverance through a visitation of judgment upon their persecutors, and great revelation of God's glory following. And the experience of the three young Hebrew exiles in Babylon comes to mind. They went through the fire, seven times heated, and they had a marvellous deliverance, and then high promotion.[136]

Certain Psalms shine with new light in the light of this terrible truth. Chief among these is the Ninety-first. Quite likely it grew up out of the experience of Israel at the last before leaving Egypt. It, of course, has its practical use in one's daily life. But the vividness and intensity of its meaning will probably never be realized as during the coming tribulation days. Nor will the exultant note running through the nine Psalms immediately following it be appreciated as by those experiencing deliverance when the tribulation is over. The Forty-sixth Psalm, and the Psalms of praise immediately following it, likewise seem to get new light.

It is quite probable that very much, all through this Book of Psalms, will be understood and appreciated fully only by the generation of God's people that go through the tribulation and know the deliverance following. Much of the old Book of God is quite meaningless to the Christian who has had no tribulation experience. That is, I mean who has never known opposition in his Christian faith, or who has slipped easily along when there is opposition.

The outstanding features in the Old Testament of this great experience are terrible persecution of the Jew, deliverance at the very worst pitch of extremity, by a visitation of judgment on their enemies, and by Jehovah coming in person for their deliverance; and then the great Kingdom following.

The outstanding features spoken of by our Lord Jesus in His Olivet talk agree with this, but go much more into detail, especially about the tribulation. The tribulation will be preceded by wars, rumors of wars, famines, earthquakes, and persecution. There will be many false religious teachers, many Christians untrue to their faith, and a great increase of wickedness. This is a sort of foreshadowing.

The tribulation itself will find all this enormously intensified. It will begin with some astonishing act of blasphemy in the temple in Jerusalem, run its terrible course, and close with a series of judgment-events, earthquake, heavens shaken, and great distress, ending in the visible appearance of the Lord Jesus Himself, out of heaven on the clouds. And this will be a signal for great penitential mourning among the people on the earth.

This, then, is the simple, broad outline with which the thoughtful reader of God's Word would naturally be familiar as he turns to this prophetic book at the end to get our Lord's last message to His followers.

Getting a Broad, Clear Outlook.

As we turn now again to the book of Revelation it will help us to remember the general plan followed in its writing. It is like a series of dissolving views of the same scene, each of which lets us see the same thing from a different point of view.

This is a simple teaching rule for getting a clear grasp of what is being taught. We are familiar with it in the Bible. The story of creation is told in the first chapter of Genesis, and then told again in the second chapter with details not given in the first, the two together presenting the complete story. The historical books of Chronicles present one view of the kingdom of Israel, the official. The books of the Kings give another look at the same period; and the prophetic books a wholly different view as seen by these rarely spiritually minded men of God. Daniel is shown four visions of future events, all covering the same general stretch of events, but with a fuller description, here of one part and there of another. The four Gospels are a familiar illustration of the same principle in teaching and story-telling. This is the plan followed here.

I was impressed anew with the practical value of this method one day in St. Petersburg. We had gone to look at the panorama of the siege of Sebastopol, then on exhibition in a huge, round building. It will be remembered that the British and French allied themselves with Turkey and Sardinia in an attempt to restrain the encroachments of Russia on Turkish territory. The famous charge of Balaklava, immortalized by Tennyson, is remembered as the most stirring event of that war. Its chief event was the siege of Sebastopol on the Crimea peninsula, in the Black Sea.

At the panorama we stood as though on a high central point in the city of Sebastopol, with the view spreading out in all directions. To the north lay the harbour with the Russian ships securely bottled in by the attacking fleets. To the west a body of French soldiers were retreating, hotly pursued by Russian troops, while in the distance British troops are hurrying to the relief of the French.

Then we looked east, where the fighting was going on at close range, the wounded being carried away and the reserves hastening up to take their places. And again we turned to the south, where the battle raged fiercest. The face of the commanding officer stood out so vividly. And we almost shrank from the fierceness of the fire. And the smell of powder almost seemed stifling.

And as I stood brooding afresh on the horrors of inhuman war, I was tremendously impressed that only by such successive views could I get such a grasp of that memorable siege. I had a more intelligent and vivid understanding of it than ever before.

And so it is that we may get a simple, clear, and real grasp of the tremendous tribulation time that is coming, that it is presented to us in this fashion, first one distinct view, then another, and another, till some understanding of the whole begins to get hold of us.

We have seen the Lord Jesus, in the vision in chapters four and five, as He comes forward to take an advance step. We have seen the tremendous outburst of praise in heaven as He steps forward. This step and scene are in heaven. The earth is wholly unaware of it at that moment.

Now all that follows is connected directly with that advance step. This is the significant thing to get clearly fixed in mind. At the present time our Lord Jesus is still walking among the candlestick Churches watching and waiting. We are still in that waiting time. The Holy Spirit still dwells in the Church on earth.

At some time in the future, no one knows, nor can know, just when, the Lord Jesus will rise up in readiness for an advance move. He will withdraw the Holy Spirit from the Church up into His presence again "before the throne." Then in connection with this advance step there will occur on the earth the things spoken of in these pages following. This is the tremendous fact to keep clear, the immediate connection between these happenings on earth and His new move in heaven.

We come now to these happenings on earth. There are seven distinct views given here in this section, chapters six to the end of the book. There is a great detail in description which it would be both instructive and interesting to study out. But we want to get at the essential things. And so we will give our time and thought to these essentials.

Our Lord Jesus is represented as about to take possession of His realm. The first step is a dispossessing of the claimants in possession. This furnishes the key to what follows. The descriptions are of the process of cleaning out the evil forces. At the close of this we find Him taking possession (in chapter twenty) and reigning over the earth.

These descriptions make it clear at once that this is the tribulation so much spoken of in these preceding pages. What follows fits so into what has been spoken of that the identification seems complete. The thing our Lord Jesus is revealing here tallies with what He had told John before on Olivet.

There comes first a general description of the whole period (chapters vi.-vii.). Then follows a description of how these happenings will come. It will be through the withdrawal of restraint and so the loosening out of evil (chapters viii.-ix.). During this whole period there will be a special faithful witnessing on earth, in the midst of the riot of evil, to God and His truth (chapter xi.).

A detailed outline of the run of events follows, giving much additional information, picturing the rise and characteristics of the leader of the tribulation time, and the manner of its close (chapters xii.-xiv.). There follows this a description of the judgments and the supreme contest with which the period closes (chapters xv.-xvi.). There is a description of the organized system of evil, and then of the fall of the capital of the system (chapters xvii.-xviii.) And then follows the actual coming of our Lord Jesus, the setting up of the kingdom, and subsequent events (chapters xix.-xxii.).

A General Look at the Storm and Its Close.

We turn now to the first of these.[137] It begins with a crowned One seated on a white horse going forth conquering and to conquer. This description agrees with the much fuller description of the Lord Jesus near the end of the book, as he goes to the earth for the decisive close of the tribulation.[138]

This gives fresh emphasis to the fact that what follows is the direct result of His advance step. At once there follows on earth a time of war, famine, death, and of persecution to the death of God's people. There is no hint as to how long this goes on. It is brought to a close with an earthquake and an equally terrific disturbance of the heavens, the sun, moon, and stars, something unknown before.

The utmost consternation is created on earth. All conditions of men, crowned kings, merchant princes, men of autocratic power financially and politically and socially, join with the humblest in hiding themselves in the great holes made by the earthquake. They feel that the time of judgment has come, and they are not ready for it.

The description of their terror tallies remarkably with the prophetic language used by Isaiah,[139] even as the whole description fits into our Lord's Olivet talk. This is seen to be a general, rapid vision of the whole tribulation period.

Then there follows what clearly seems to be a parenthesis fitting in just before the great earthquake. The earth and sea have been terribly torn up by the earthquake. This parenthesis begins with a command that the earth and sea be not hurt until certain things have taken place.

This fits the two events of the parenthesis in just before the ruinous earthquake takes place. The two events are of a radically different sort from what has just been told. They are thus put by themselves, and the run of evil and of judgment upon it, put by itself, so keeping these two quite clear, following the general plan of the book.

There are two events in this parenthesis. There is what is called the "sealing" of a certain number of the Hebrew tribes on the earth. Twelve thousand of each tribe are sealed, making a total of one hundred and forty-four thousand. The word "seal" is used in two senses in the Bible, as a means of fastening up a writing or roll, and, in the New Testament, commonly for the presence of the Holy Spirit in a human life.

The seal in this second sense was a mark of ownership. Paul tells us that we are sealed with the Holy Spirit,[140] so indicating that we belong to the Lord Jesus, who gives us this evidence of His ownership. If this simple, natural meaning be taken here, it would mean that at this time the Holy Spirit has been poured out upon the Jew. The spiritual regeneration spoken of so frequently in the prophetic pages takes place at this time.

The significance of the numbers should be noticed. Twelve is the number commonly used in the Bible, for corporate completeness, to indicate that a group is complete. Twelve times twelve would simply represent a fully completed corporate number. That is to say, upon the entire body of Jews then living on the earth the Holy Spirit is poured out, thus marking them once again as God's peculiar people, restored fully to favour after the long national rejection.

The second event is of equally intense interest, indeed to us of non-Jewish birth it has yet greater interest. John is up in heaven. It is from that point of view that he sees. Now he is suddenly startled. All at once there appears before his eyes a group he had not seen before. He describes it as a great multitude, actually countless, out of all the peoples of the whole earth, a great polyglot polyracial world company.

They are clothed in white, holding the conqueror's palm in their hands, and singing, making wondrous music. John is getting another taste of the music of heaven. And their singing is a signal for a fresh outburst of praise by the angels, the elders, and the living creatures. All this seems to occur suddenly, this appearance of this new company before the throne.

John gazes spellbound, wondering who these are, and where they come from, and what this means. And he is told that these are they that come out of the tribulation, the great one, down on the earth. Then in a few exquisitely tender, heart-touching words their happiness is described.

These two events occur just before the terrible earthquake and the shake-up of the earth's heavenly bodies. Just before the judgment that closes the tribulation this double event takes place, the conversion of the Jews, and the catching away out of the tribulation distress on earth, up into the presence of the throne, of the followers of our Lord Jesus.

We remember that that great Jew, Paul, was converted by the appearance of Jesus in the heavens above him. We remember that in the Olivet talk Jesus says that His followers will so be gathered up to Himself at the time of His second coming. These two events, taking place here, tell us what has happened down on the earth. In his vision John, being in heaven, sees these things as they appear from above.

This is the first view of the tribulation. It begins with the moment when our Lord Jesus up in heaven begins action, describes the characteristics of the tribulation on earth, and closes with the national regeneration of Israel, and the catching up from earth of Christ's true followers.

Evil Let Loose.

The second view runs through chapters eight and nine. Chapters ten and eleven to the close of verse thirteen make a distinct parenthesis. And then this view is picked up again at eleven, fourteen, and runs to the close of that chapter. But this final bit in chapter eleven is merely a connecting link with what comes later. Practically the whole of this view is in chapters eight and nine.

It closes with an earthquake, so connecting it with the final event in the first view. It begins with a period of prolonged silence, which would seem to answer to the hush in the great volume of praise in the first view, when the Lamb takes the sealed roll. So it carries us back to the same starting-point as there.

There is first a striking scene before the throne, where John sees a golden altar. On this there is being offered incense, which is said to be added to the prayers of all the saints. Incense and prayers rise together before God. Then an angel pours some of the fire of this prayer-altar into the earth, and a storm follows. So these two views, first and second, have another common starting-point, the beginning of a storm.

This is a very suggestive scene. The prayers of all the saints, both in earth and heaven, have a decided restraining influence over evil down on earth at the present time. At the close they will become a decisive influence in the cleaning-up process on earth, and the bringing in of the new orde

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KJV: Behold, these shall come from far: and, lo, these from the north and from the west; and these from the land of Sinim.

WEB: Behold, these shall come from far; and behold, these from the north and from the west; and these from the land of Sinim."