An Exposition of Revelation .pdf

saying, How long, O Sovereign, the holy and true, dost thou not judge and avenge our blood on those
that dwell on the earth? And there was given to them, to each one a white robe; and it was said to them
that they should rest yet a little while, till both their fellow-bondmen and their brethren who were
about to be killed as they too should be fulfilled."
Under the altar are disclosed the souls of those who had been slain for the word of God, and for
their testimony; yet they cry aloud for vengeance to the Sovereign Master, and are vindicated before
God, but must wait. Others, both their fellow-servants and their brethren, are about to be killed (as
they were) ere that day comes. But they rest meanwhile. Many a person thinks that those in question
are Christians. But if we look more closely into the passage, we may learn that this again confirms the
antecedent removal of the church to heaven. Is theirs a prayer or desire according to the grace of the
gospel? Reasoning is hardly needful on a point so manifest. He who understands the general drift of
the New Testament, and the special prayers there recorded by the Holy Ghost for our instruction,
would be satisfied but for a false bias. Take Stephen's prayer, after our blessed Lord the pattern of all
that is perfect. On the other hand we have similar language elsewhere: but where? In the Psalms and
the Prophets. Thus we have all the evidence that can be required. The evidence of the New Testament
proves that these are not the sanctioned prayers of the Christian; the evidence of the Old Testament,
that just such were the prayers of persons whose feelings and experience and desires were founded on
Israelitish hopes.
Does not this exactly fall in with what has been already seen? that once the glorified saints shall
have passed out of the scene, God will be at work in the formation of a new testimony with its own
peculiarities. It is not of course that the facts of the New Testament are obliterated, but the souls of the
saints will be then led into what was revealed of old, because God is about to accomplish what was
then predicted. For the time will be at hand for God to rule the earth under the Lord's direct rule. Of
this the Old Testament is full, the earth blessed under the reign of the heavens: as the N.T. views
Christ as head of both. The earth, and the earthly people Israel, shall rejoice with the nations, all then
enjoying the days of heaven here below. Accordingly these souls show us their condition and hopes;
they pray for earthly judgments. They desire not, when suffering even to death, that their enemies
should be converted, but that God would avenge their blood on them. Nothing can be simpler or surer
than the inference.
The departed are told that they are not the only faithful to be given up to a violent end: others
must follow later. Till then God does not appear for the accomplishment of that judgment for which
they cried. They must wait therefore for the further and, as we know, more furious outburst of
persecution. After that God will deal with the earth. Thus we have here the latest persecution in
prospect, as well as the earlier one, of the Apocalyptic period distinctly given. The apostle Paul had
spoken of himself as ready to be offered up: so these had been, and their souls are seen therefore under
the altar in the vision. They were renewed indeed, and understood what Israel ought to do; but they
were not on the ground of Christian faith and church intelligence as we ought to be. Of course it is a
vision, but a vision with weighty and plain intimations to us. If they had not the indwelling Paraclete
as we have, they had the Spirit of prophecy, which is the testimony of Jesus (Rev. 19: 10). Judgment
yet lingers till the predicted final outpouring of man's apostate rage, when the Lord will appear and put
down all enemies for the establishing of God's kingdom everywhere.
The next Seal lets us know that God was not indifferent meanwhile; for the sixth Seal may be
regarded as a kind of immediate consequence on the foregoing cry. "And I saw when he opened the
sixth seal, and there was a great earthquake; and the sun became black as sackcloth hair, and the whole
moon became as blood; and the stars of the heaven fell unto the earth, even as a fig tree shaken by a
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