Days of Vengeance - The Preterist Archive

7:9
hopelessly to destruction, and He is able only to snatch
with difficulty here and there a brand from the
universal burning. The world does not govern Him in a
single one of its acts: He governs it and leads it steadily
onward to the end which, from the beginning, or ever
a beam of it had been laid, He had determined for it
. . . . Through all the years one increasing purpose runs,
one increasing purpose: the kingdoms of the earth
become ever more and more the Kingdom of our God
and His Christ. The process may be slow; the progress
may appear to our impatient eyes to lag. But it is God
who is building: and under His hands the structure rises
as steadily as it does slowly, and in due time the
capstone shall be set into its place, and to our
astonished eyes shall be revealed nothing less than a
saved world.” 14
Unfortunately, many have failed to appreciate fully the
implications of this passage. For more than a century,
Christianity has been plagued by an altogether
unwarranted defeatism: We have believed in the
depravity of man more than in the sovereignty of God.
We have more faith in an unregenerate creature’s
power to resist God’s Word, than in the power of the
almighty Creator to turn a man’s heart according to His
will. Such an impotent attitude has not always
characterized God’s people. Charles Spurgeon
encouraged a gathering of missionaries with these
words: “I myself believe that King Jesus will reign, and
the idols be utterly abolished; but I expect the same
power which turned the world upside down once will
still continue to do it. The Holy Ghost would never
suffer the imputation to rest upon His holy name that
He was not able to convert the world.” 15
Because of the Resurrection and Ascension of Christ,
this is the age of the triumph of the Gospel. The plain
indications of Scripture are that the tendency of the
nations, over time, will be toward conversion. The
saved will vastly outnumber the lost. Throughout the
Book of Revelation, as in the rest of the Bible, we find
Satan continually defeated before the great army of the
elect. Even when Satan appears to be dominant, he
knows that “he has only a short time” (12:12). The
period of Satan’s seeming triumph is counted in days
and months (12:6; 13:5), and even then it is nothing
more than a mad, futile scramble for fleeting power; in
marked contrast, the period of the saints’ dominion is
measured in years – a thousand of them – and from first
(1:6) to last (20:4-6) they are designated as kings. Jesus
is Victor! He has come to save the world, to redeem the
nations, and He will not be disappointed: “He will see
His offspring, He will prolong His days, and the good
pleasure of the LORD will prosper in His hand” (Isa.
53:10).
St. John sees the redeemed world of victorious saints
standing before the Throne and before the Lamb in
worship. They are clothed in white robes, symbolizing
righteousness, with palm branches in their hands, as
the well-known symbol of the restoration of God’s
people to Paradise. This is also reminiscent of the Feast
of Tabernacles, initiated during the Exodus: It is no
accident that the word tabernacle occurs in this passage
(see on v. 15 below). 16 R. J. Rushdoony shows how
extensive the Exodus imagery is in the symbolism of
Revelation: “Jesus is both the true Moses (the Song of
Moses is cited in Rev. 15:2ff.), and the greater Joshua.
He is the deliverer of God’s people. Simeon at the
temple declared that his eyes had seen God’s salvation,
having seen the infant saviour (Luke 2:30; cf. Isa.
52:10), for he was one of those ‘who were looking for
the redemption of Jerusalem’ (Luke 2:38), i.e., its
deliverance from captivity, from spiritual Egypt.
Pharaoah’s killing of the infants is paralleled by Herod’s
murderous order (Ex. 1:16; 2:15; 4:19; Matt. 2:16). The
infant Christ is called the true Israel called out of Egypt
(Matt. 2:14f.; cf. Ex. 4:22; Hos. 11:1). Israel’s 40 years
of temptation in the wilderness, and its failure, is
matched by Christ’s 40 days of temptation in the
wilderness, ending in victory; Jesus resisted by quoting
Moses. Jesus sent out 12 disciples, to be the new Israel
of God, the new heads of a new nation or people. Jesus
also sent out 70 (Luke 10:1ff.), even as Moses gathered
70, to whom God gave the Spirit (Num. 11:16ff.). We
are given parallels to the conquest of Canaan, and the
destruction of its cities by the fire of judgment (Matt.
10:15; ll:20ff.; Luke 10:12ff.; Deut. 9:lff.; Matt. 24).
The old Jerusalem now has the role of Canaan and is to
be destroyed (Matt. 24). The whole world is the new
Canaan, to be judged and conquered: ‘Go ye into all
the world. . . .’ Both Exodus and Revelation conclude
with the Tabernacle, the first with the type, the second
with the reality.” 17
There are other parallels here as well. The Feast of
Dedication (Hanukkah) commemorated the cleansing
of the Temple by Judas Maccabaeus in 164/165 B. C.,
after its defilement by Antiochus IV Epiphanes, when
the Jews rejoiced “with thanksgiving, and branches of
palm trees, and with harps, and cymbals, and with viols,
and hymns, and songs: because there was destroyed a
great enemy out of Israel” (1 Mac. 13:51). Jesus
attended this feast (John 10:22), and on Palm Sunday
He imitated Judas Maccabaeus’s action by cleansing the
Temple of its defilement by the moneychangers (Matt.
21:12-13; Mark 11:15-17; Luke 19:45-46; cf. John 2:13-
16).
In paralleling the cleansing of the Temple, the scene of
the redeemed multitude in Revelation also reverses the
image; for, unlike the great multitude that greeted Jesus
with palm branches (Matt. 21:8), but possessed only
leaves and no fruit (Matt. 21:19), the multitude of
Revelation 7 is Christ’s new nation, bearing fruit and
14. Benjamin B. Warfield, from a sermon on John 3:16 entitled “God’s Immeasurable
Love,” in Biblical and Theological Studies (Philadelphia: Presbyterian
and Reformed Publishing CO., 1968), PP. 518f.
15. Quoted in Iain Murray, The Puritan Hope: Revival and the Interpretation of
Prophecy (London: The Banner of Truth Trust, 1971), p. 258.
16. See David Chilton, Paradise Restored: A Biblical Theology of Dominion (Ft.
Worth, TX: Dominion Press, 1985), pp. 44-46, 60.
17. Rousas John Rushdoony, Thy Kingdom Come: Studies in Daniel and Revelation
(Tyler, TX: Thoburn Press, [1970] 1978), PP. 149f.
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