Days of Vengeance - The Preterist Archive

17:17-18
carnage of the Jewish inhabitants exceeded all the
other massacres. The whole Jewish quarter was deluged
with blood, and fifty thousand corpses lay in ghastly
heaps in the streets. 21 This is a terrible commentary on
the words of the angel-interpreter: ‘The ten horns
which thou sawest upon the beast, these shall hate the
whore,’ etc.” 22
It is important to realize, as we noted above, that the
Beast destroyed Jerusalem as part of his war against
Christ; the Roman leaders’ motive in destroying the
Temple was not only to put down the Jewish rebellion,
but to obliterate Christianity, as Sulphius Severus
recorded:
Titus is said, after calling a council, to have first
deliberated whether he should destroy the temple, a structure
of such extraordinary work. For it seemed good to some that
a sacred edifice, distinguished above all human achievements,
ought not to be destroyed, inasmuch as, if preserved, it would
furnish an evidence of Roman moderation, but, if destroyed,
would serve for a perpetual proof of Roman cruelty. But on
the opposite side, others and Titus himself thought that the
temple ought specially to be overthrown, in order that the
religion of the Jews and of the Christians might more
thoroughly be subverted; for that these religions, although
contrary to each other, had nevertheless proceeded from the
same authors; that the Christians had sprung up from among
the Jews; and that, if the root were extirpated, the offshoot
would speedily perish. 23
The Beast thought that he could kill the Whore and
the Bride in one stroke! But when the dust settled, the
scaffolding of old, apostate Jerusalem lay in ruins, and
the Church was revealed as the new and most glorious
Temple, God’s eternal dwelling place.
17 The sovereign Lord is thus not at the mercy of the
Beast and his minions; rather, all these events have
been predestined for God’s glory, through the execution
of His decrees. For God has put it into their hearts to
execute His purpose by having a common purpose,
and by giving their kingdom to the Beast. Obviously,
it is a sin for these kings to give their kingdoms to the
Beast, for the purpose of making war against the Lamb.
And yet it is God who put it into their hearts! Some
will complain, of course, that this makes God “the
Author of sin.” The obvious answer to such an
objection is that the text says that God placed the evil
purpose into their hearts; at the same time, we are
assured that “the LORD is righteous in all His ways.” If
we believe the Bible, we must believe both Revelation
17:17 and Psalm 145:17. We must hold firmly to two
(seemingly contradictory) points: First, God is not
responsible for sin; Second, nothing happens in spite of
Him, or in opposition to His purpose. 24 Thus, to those
who fight against the Word of God, the Biblical
response is blunt: “On the contrary, who are you, O
man, who answers back to God? The thing molded will
not say to the molder, ‘Why did you make me like this,’
will it? Or does not the potter have a right over the
clay, to make from the same lump one vessel for honor,
and another vessel for dishonor?” (Rom. 9:20-21). St.
Augustine observed: “It is, therefore, in the power of
the wicked to sin; but that in sinning they do this or
that is not in their power, but in God’s, who divides the
darkness and regulates it; so that hence even what they
do contrary to God’s will is not fulfilled except it be God’s
will.” 25
The whole purpose for the heathen kings’ wrath, for
their joining in conspiracy against both the Bride and
the Harlot, for their surrendering their kingdoms to the
Beast and receiving power for one hour with him, is
now revealed. God has put it into their hearts to fulfill
His purpose, until the words of God should be
fulfilled. The war between Christ and the Beast,
culminating in the desolation of the Harlot, took place
in fulfillment of God’s announcements through His
prophets. The curses of the Covenant (Deut. 28) were
executed on Israel through the Beast and the ten horns.
They were the instruments of God’s wrath, as Christ
had foretold in His discourse on the Mount of Olives.
During these horrifying “days of vengeance,” He said,
all things that were written would be fulfilled (Luke
21:22). Vision and prophecy would be sealed and
completed in the destruction of the old world order
(Dan. 9:24).
18 The angel now identifies the Harlot as the Great
City, which, as we have seen, St. John uses as a term for
Jerusalem, where the Lord was crucified (11:8; 16:19).
Moreover, says the angel, this City has a Kingdom over
all the kings of the earth. It is perhaps this verse, more
than any other, which has confused expositors into
supposing, against all other evidence, that the Harlot is
Rome. If the City is Jerusalem, how can she be said to
wield this kind of worldwide political power? The
answer is that Revelation is not a book about politics; it is
a book about the Covenant. Jerusalem did reign over the
nations. She did possess a Kingdom which was above all
the kingdoms of the world. She had a covenantal
21. Josephus, The Jewish War, ii.xviii.
22. J. Stuart Russell, The Parousia: A Critical Inquiry into the New Testament Doctrine of Our Lord’s Second Coming (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, [1887] 1983), p.
503.
23. The Sacred History of Sulpitius Severus, in A Select Libraty of Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, [n.d.] 1973), Second
Series, Vol. 11, p. 111. This information from Sulpitius seems to have been derived from Tacitus’s record of eyewitness accounts. See Michael Grant, The Twelve
Caesars (New York: Charles Scribners Sons, 1975), pp. 228f.
24. These seem contradictory to us because we are creatures. Problems such as the relationship of God’s sovereignty and human responsibility, or of God’s sovereignty
and God’s righteousness, or of unity and diversity within the Trinity, cannot be “solved” by us because we are not capable of comprehending God. Cornelius Van
Til writes: “Human knowledge can never be completely comprehensive knowledge. Every knowledge transaction has in it somewhere a reference point to God.
Now since God is not fully comprehensible to us we are bound to come into what seems to be contradiction in all our knowledge. Our knowledge is analogical
and therefore must be paradoxical” (The Defense of the Faith, Philadelphia: Presbyterian and Reformed, third revised ed., 1967, p. 44). For this reason, “all teaching
of Scripture is apparently contradictory” (Common Grace and the Gospel, Nutley, NJ: Presbyterian and Reformed, 1972, p. 142; cf. pp. 9ff.; cf. Van Til’s Introduction
to Systematic Theology, Presbyterian and Reformed, pp. 247 ff.). For a full consideration of this matter, see John Frame, “The Problem of Theological Paradox; in
Gary North, ed., Foundations of Christian Scholarship (Vallecito, CA: Ross House Books, 1976), pp. 295-330.
25. St. Augustine, Anti-Pelagian Works, Peter Holmes and Robert Ernest Wallis, trans. (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans, reprinted 1971), p. 514, italics added; cf.
John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, ii.iv.4.
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