Days of Vengeance - The Preterist Archive

18:22-24
22-23 As a further indication of the removal of the
Harlot’s covenantal status, the angel announces that
the blessings of the Garden of Eden will be forever
taken away. Alluding both to Jeremiah’s prophecies
against the rebellious Jerusalem of his day (Jer. 7:34;
16:9; 25:10; cf. Isa. 24:7-12), and to Ezekiel’s prophecy
against the king of Tyre (Ezek. 28:11-19), he
pronounces the City’s doom in five parts:
First, there is a fourfold description of the loss of music
throughout the entire Land: And the sound of harpists
and musicians and flute-players and trumpeters will
not be heard in you any longer (cf. the mention of
“tambourines” and “flutes” in Ezek. 28:13 [margin]).
Second, the productivity of the Land disappears, as the
workman is taken from Israel and cast into the Abyss:
No craftsman of any craft will be found in you any
longer. According to Zechariah, the tyranny of
heathen nations over Israel would be restrained by her
craftsmen (Zech. 1: 18-21). But, for apostate Israel, this
bulwark against oppression will no longer exist.
The third and middle item in the list is significant: The
sound of a mill will not be heard in you any longer.
The image of the Mill was, throughout the ancient
world, a symbol of the foundation of the cosmos,
grinding out peace and prosperity; the Mill’s
destruction signifies the End of the Age. 18 The
centrality of the mill in this passage may indicate that
the Temple, as the Mill that supports the world, is to be
destroyed; Christ has brought in the Final Age.
Fourth, Israel will suffer the loss of God’s Word, of
discernment and wisdom, and of eschatological hope:
The light of a lamp will not shine in you any longer.
Fifth, the summing-up of Jerusalem’s desolation is that,
as the unfaithful wife, the Harlot, she has been cast out
and replaced by another: The Voice of Bridegroom
and Bride will not be heard in you any longer.
These five points mark several important characteristics
of the Jerusalem Temple:
1. Music – the Levitical orchestra and choir
(1 Chron. 25)
2. Craftsmen – cf. Bezalel, Oholiab, Hiram, etc.
(Ex. 31:1-11; 1 Kings 5)
3. Mill – the Temple itself
(the “threshingfloor”; 2 Chron. 3:1)
4. Lamp – the Lampstand(s)
(Ex. 25:31-40; 2 Chron. 4:19-22)
5. Marriage – the marriage of the Lord and Israel
(Ezek. 16:1-14)
The desolation of Jerusalem is said to fall on her for two
reasons. First, her merchants were the great men of
the Land. This should not seem strange at first glance;
much the same could be said of any city in history. In
any prosperous economy, merchants will be prominent.
But what, in the final analysis, were Israel’s “merchants”
trading in? The souls of men (v. 13). As Jesus had
thundered to the “great men of the Land”: “Woe to you,
scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, because you travel
about on sea and land to make one convert; and when
he becomes one, you make him twice as much a son of
hell as yourselves!” (Matt. 23:15).
The second reason for Jerusalem’s punishment flows
from the first: all the nations were deceived by your
sorcery. Israel had been the priest to the nations of the
world, ordained both to bring them the light of
salvation and to offer up sacrifices on their behalf. This
should have culminated in the presentation of Christ to
the nations as the Light of the world and the true
sacrifice for their sins. Instead, Israel rejected Christ,
the sum and substance of Biblical religion. By
attempting to retain the formal structure of the Old
Covenant in its rejection of the New, Israel essentially
created a hybrid religion of occult Satan-worship and
statism.’ 9 And she was torn in pieces by her own gods.
24 St. John provides a final clue to the Harlot’s
identity in this verse, confirming our interpretation
that she represents Jerusalem: In her was found the
blood of prophets and of saints and of all who have
been slain on the earth. This is a clear allusion to
Christ’s condemnation of Jerusalem, at the close of His
final discourse in the Temple:
Therefore, behold, I am sending you prophets and wise
men and scribes; some of them you will kill and crucify, and
some of them you will scourge in your synagogues, and
persecute from city to city, that upon you may fall all the
righteous blood shed on the earth, from the blood of righteous
Abel to the blood of Zechariah, the son of Berechiah, whom
you murdered between the sanctuary and the altar. Truly I say
to you, all these things shall come upon this generation. O
Jerusalem, Jerusalem, who kills the prophets and stones those
who are sent to her! (Matt. 23:34-37)
This language cannot be used of Rome or any other
city. Only Jerusalem was guilty of “all the righteous
blood shed on the earth,” from Abel onward.
Historically, it was Jerusalem that had always been the
great Harlot, continually falling into apostasy and
persecuting the prophets (Acts 7:51-52); Jerusalem was
the place where the prophets were killed: as Jesus
Himself said, “It cannot be that a prophet should perish
outside of Jerusalem. O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city
that kills the prophets and stones those sent to her!”
(Luke 13:33-34). St. John’s “Covenant Lawsuit” was
true, and effective. Jerusalem was found guilty as
charged, and from A.D. 66-70 she suffered the “days of
vengeance,” the outpouring of God’s wrath for her
agelong shedding of innocent blood.
18. See Giorgio de Santillana and Hertha von Dechend, Hamlet’s Mill: An Essay
on Myth and the Frame of Time (Ipswich: Gambit, 1969). On the symbolism
of Samson’s grinding at the mill (Jud. 16:21), see James B. Jordan, Judges:
God’s War Against Humanism (Tyler, TX: Geneva Ministries, 1985), p. 273.
19. On the intimate historical relationship between occultism and statism, see
Gary North, Unholy Spirits: Occultism and New Age Humanism (Ft. Worth,
TX; Dominion Press, 1986).
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