THE The Book AND: Symbols Revelation
THE The Book AND: Symbols Revelation
THE The Book AND: Symbols Revelation
is at hand."
To follow the book chapter by chapter, consecutively. The
figure of Jesus's beloved as "kings and priests" is taken from Ex.
xix. 6, "Ye shall be unto me a kingdom of priests" ; but is used also
by Peter, "a royal priesthood," 1 Peter ii. 9. The cometh
figure "he
with clouds" is in Daniel vii. 13, "One like the Son of man came
with the clouds of heaven" ; in Revelation followed by an allusion
to Zech. xii. 10, upon me whom they have pierced,
"They shall look
ance of his loins even upward, and from the appearance of his
loins even downward .... As the appearance of the bow that is in
the cloud in the day of rain, so was the appearance of the brightness
round about" a clear correspondence to the Revelator's red sardine
;
they four had the face of an ox on the left side they four also had ;
resolved into its components, "The first beast was like a lion, and the
second beast like a calf [the Greek includes young oxkind, at any
stage] and the third beast had a face as a man, and the fourth
.
beast was like a flying eagle," Rev. iv. 7. Ezekiel gives each beast
THE SYMBOLS OF THE BOOK OF REVELATION. 679
four wings. John adds two more ; Ezekiel gives "rings full of eyes
round about," to the wheels accompanying the beasts wherever they
went. Ezek. i. 6, 18; and he ends the description with the explana-
tion."This was the appearance of the likeness of the glory of
the Lord," while John represents the -beasts as giving glory and
honor and thanks to him that sitteth on the throne, Rev. iv. 9 the ;
and without and there was written therein lamentations, and mourn-
;
ing, and woe." As the "book" was a roll, "without" and "on the
backside" are synonymous. Here, as in the case of the four beasts.
John resolves the general contents of Ezekiel's book into their suc-
cessive stages of opening or development of events, to seven, the
Jewish symbol of completeness or, as Daniel has it, "Shut up the
;
words, and seal the book, even to the time of the end." Dan. xii. 4,
in both representing a completed series. John's symbol indicates
that only "the Lamb" was able to "loose the seals" or reveal the
contents, or woeful events coming on the earth.
The four horses going forth successively on the opening of the
first, second, third and fourth seal, compare with Zechariah's, "In
the first chariot were red horses, and in the second chariot black
horses, and in the third chariot white horses, and in the fourth
chariot grizzled and bay horses," compare Rev. vi. 1-8 with Zech.
3.'
vi. 2.
as blood," Rev. vi. 12; this is taken from Joel's description of "the
day of the Lord": "The earth shall quake before them. .The sun . .
shall be turned into darkness, and the moon into blood, before the
great and the terrible day of the Lord come," Joel ii. 10, 31. "The
heaven departing as a scroll, the stars falling as untimely figs,"
Rev. vi. 13-14, from Is. xxxiv. 4, "And all the host of heaven shall be
dissolved, and the heavens shall be rolled together as a scroll and ;
680 THE OPEN COURT.
all their host shall fall down, as the leaf. .. .and as a falling fig
from the fig-tree." Both of the foregoing figures are cited also in
Matt. xxiv. 29.
The hiding in dens and in rocks, Rev. vi. 15, parallels Is. ii.
19-21, "They shall go into the holes of the rocks, and into the caves
of the earth for fear of the Lord." The calling to the mountains.
"Fall on us," repeats Hos. x. 8, "They shall say to the mountains,
Cover us ; and to the hills. Fall on us."
With the four winds in Rev. vii. 1 compare Dan. vii. 2 ; they
represent destructive agencies against the earth ; restrained in Reve-
lation, hut in action in Daniel. "Sealed," Rev. vii. 3, 4, has its
through the and smite. .but come not near any man upon
city, . .
suggestion from Joel and ii. 3-8, "The locust, the nation.
i .whose . .
teeth are the teeth of a lion the appearance of them as the ap- ;
serpent, and the promise, "Her seed shall bruise thy head," Gen. iii.
15. Yet, as the seed of the woman "keep the commandments of
God, and have the testimony of Jesus Christ," the woman represents
Christianity, persecuted and driven into exile and obscure places by
the dragon "having' seven heads and ten horns, and seven crowns
upon his heads" figured in chapter xiii as a "beast" to whom the
;
dragon transferred "his power, and his seat, and great authority."
This beast is a composite of the four beasts of Dan. vii, the leopard.
the bear, the lion and the beast of ten horns, and is explained in
Rev. xvii.
The second beast of Rev. xiii. 11-18 is usually explained as
the cult or priesthood of emperor-worship, introduced by Caligula
A. D. 39. "The number of his name" numbers in Greek as in :
being the letters for ch, x, and the digamma, spells no recognizable
name but the Hebrew characters for 50 + 200 + 6 + 50 and for
;
100-60 + 200, making together 666 as the sum, spell N{e)ron Ksr:
682 THE OPEN COURT.
Yet that all waters became blood, and that every creature in the sea
died, for this, reaches hyperbole.
The figures under the sixth plague take us
prophecy of to the
Jeremiah against "Babylon, Jer. and li the drying-up of the Euphra-1 ;
tes that the way of the kings of the east might be prepared, com-
pares with "Prepare against her the nations, with the kings of the
Medes" ; the kings of the east being the Persians and Medes, border-
ing Babylonia on the east, and who overthrew Babylon. The order
of the Greek in verse 13 is rendered into English, "And I saw
[come] out of the mouth of the dragon, and out of the mouth of
the beast, and out of the mouth of the false prophet, three spirits,
battle, may well prefigure the decisive great struggle between Chris-
tianity and Roman paganism.
Under the seventh seal, "every island fled away, and the moun-
tains were not found," like Rev. vi. 14, echoes several suggestive
Old Testament figures, but especially Habakkuk iii. 6. "The ever-
lasting mountains were scattered." The hail, "about the weight of
a talent." that is 114 pounds, 15 pennyweights, would be as deadly
as cannon-balls of like weight, had not the conditions of hail-fall
limited the size of hailstones to a few ounces.
Rev. xvii. 9 explains the unchaste woman and the beast having
seven heads and ten horns. "The seven heads are seven mountains,
on which the woman sitteth." further identified as "that great city,
which reigneth over the kings of the earth," imperial and "seven-
hilled" Rome ; the directive power being shifted from the dragon or
Satan to that of a false or immoral religion, under a figure familiar
to the prophets, that of an impure woman. Ezek. xvi and xxiii
Hos. i-iv : Jer. iii.The symbolic name of the city, like the figure
of the beast, is drawn from Daniel, namely, Babylon, the seat of
the first and foremost of his four beasts. Primarily the heads
represent "seven kings." that is "emperors," who killed the saints
and fought against the Lamb. "Five are fallen": Augustus Ca?sar,
the first emperor of Rome; Tiberius: Caligula: Claudius, and Xero.
This much is clear ; the rest of the kings, because of the peculiarity
of the description, are not clearly understood.
Rev. with the fall of the city. With verse 2 compare
xviii deals
Is. xxi. "Babylon is fallen, is fallen" for the foul creatures
9, ;
inhabiting it. compare Is. xiii. 19-22. and xxxiv. 11-15. With verse
4 compare Jer. 1. 8, and li. 6. 45 with verse 5 compare Jer. li. 9 ;
with verse 6 compare Jer. 1. 15. 29: with verse 7 compare Is. xlvii.
7-14: "Thou saidst. I shall be a lady forever. . . .that sayest in thine
heart. . . not sit as a widow, neither shall I know the loss
.1 shall
shall come upon thee suddenly. .the astrologers. .the fire shall. . . .
burn them." Thus the quotations from Isaiah and Jeremiah are
brought over with the name from their prophecies concerning ancient
Babylon but verses 9-19 describe a merchant city, and are drawn
:
and souls of men," in verse 13, compare with Ezek. xxvii. 13, "They
traded the persons of men." With verses 15-19 compare Ezek.
xxvii. 29-33.
684 THE OPEN COURT.
strained from activity for a thousand years, while the souls of the
beheaded martyrs are living and reigning with Christ. This "mil-
lennium" is from the Secrets of Enoch, composed between 30 B. C.
and 70 A. D., in which (chaps, xxxii, xxxiii) the duration of
the Messianic kingdom is first figured as a millennium, based ap-
parently on the Persian theory that the creation, occupying six days
followed by a Sabbath rest, prefigured that the world's age would
in which all that are in their graves shall hear his voice, And shall
come forth they that have done good, unto the resurrection of
;
life and they that have done evil, unto the resurrection of dam-
;
not of Christ's reign, and that only the beheaded are mentioned,
though- those martyred by other means must have been a greater
number.
The figure of Gog and Magog is drawn from Ezek. xxxviii
and xxxix. for the peoples north of Syria, to the Black Sea. The
figure of the judgment with its books is from Dan. vii. 10. Rev.
xx. 9, 10, describes Satan himself and his dupes overthrown verses ;
12, 13, the general judgment, yet distinctly of the dead, not of the
living.
The figure of the new heaven and the new earth, and the
passing of the old. Rev. xxi. draws from Is. xiii. 13, "Therefore
I will shake the heavens, and the earth shall remove out of her
place"; and lxv. 17-19, "I create new heavens, and a new earth;
and the former shall not be remembered, nor come into mind" and ;
of the "holy Jerusalem" (Rev. xxi. 10) recalls Ezek. xl. 2 and
xlviii. 30-35, the city of twelve gates, three on each of the four sides,
north, east, south and west but the 4500 measures are enlarged to
;
lii. 1 : and Zech. xiv. 16 20, 21. John describes only the city,
new earth.
capital of the
With Rev. xxii. 1-5 compare Ezek. xlvii. 1-12, "Waters issued
out from under the threshold of the house" ( i. e., the temple) ". . . .
into the sea, the waters shall be healed. .. .and evervthing- shall
686 THE OPEN COURT.
live whither the river cometh. . . .And by the river upon the bank
thereof, on this side and on that side, shall grow all trees for meat,
whose leaf shall not fade, neither shall the fruit thereof be con-
sumed ; it shall bring forth new fruit according to his months,
because their waters issued out of the sanctuary ; and the fruit
thereof shall be for meat, and the leaf thereof for medicine." Also
especially for "throne" and "light" compare Zech. xiv. 7-9.
Thus in the book called Revelation is described a Messianic
earthly kingdom, obtained through great conflicts. "Revelation"
is a translation of the Greek apokalypsis. But this book is only one
of several apocalyptic books, and in order to understand their nature,
we indicate the contents of the Book of Enoch (five parts com-
bined )perhaps the most important of all non-canonical apocalyptic
,
deals with the fall of angels, a final judgment held on Mt. Sinai,
a general resurrection, consignment of the wicked to Gehenna, God
establishing his kingdom in Jerusalem, Gentiles converted, and the
just eating from the tree of life the Messiah, to whom God has
;
committed all dominion and all judgment, dwelling among the elect
in a new heaven and a new earth. This book is quoted in Jude
14, and apparently in Matt. xix. 28 and John v. 22, 27. It is a