(Chap 11.)
IN the parenthesis between the openings of the sixth and seventh seals, we had the tribes of the children of Israel brought before us, as well as nations, kindreds, and tongues; so in the parenthetic announcement between the sounding of the sixth and seventh trumpets, John is not only commanded to prophesy again before many nations and tongues, but Israel, too, is again introduced. Daniel’s people, with the holy city and temple of God, are presented at the opening of this chapter. Gentiles, too, are treading underfoot the holy city. When this scene is fulfilled, Jews and Gentiles will be recognized as such. Not so now; for in the Church of God there is neither Jew nor Greek, but all believers are one in Christ; but when the body is complete, and we have been caught up to meet the Lord in the air, then, as we have before seen, the seventieth week of prophecy relating to Daniel’s people and city will have its accomplishment; therefore Jews and Gentiles will be again recognized as such. It will be the transition time between the coming of the Lord for His saints, and His coming with His saints. Our chapter, therefore, begins with the following announcement: “And there was given me a reed like unto a rod: and the angel stood, saying, Rise and measure the temple of God, and the altar, and them that worship therein. But the court which is without the temple leave out, and measure it not; for it is given unto the Gentiles, and the holy city shall they tread under foot forty and two months.”
We must distinguish, however, between “THE TIMES OF THE GENTILES,” and “THE FULLNESS OF THE GENTILES;” for they are very distinct in Scripture. It is clearly the former which is referred to here. Our Lord said that “Jerusalem shall be trodden down of the Gentiles, until the times of the Gentiles be fulfilled.” (Luke 21:2424And they shall fall by the edge of the sword, and shall be led away captive into all nations: and Jerusalem shall be trodden down of the Gentiles, until the times of the Gentiles be fulfilled. (Luke 21:24).) We may say that the times of the Gentiles began with Nebuchadnezzar, from which time, more or less, Israel and the holy city have been trodden down by them, and Gentilism has had the ascendancy. It ran through its four successive monarchies, and since then has been hastening on to its completion in the ten kingdoms, and final destruction. (Daniel 2:31-4531Thou, O king, sawest, and behold a great image. This great image, whose brightness was excellent, stood before thee; and the form thereof was terrible. 32This image's head was of fine gold, his breast and his arms of silver, his belly and his thighs of brass, 33His legs of iron, his feet part of iron and part of clay. 34Thou sawest till that a stone was cut out without hands, which smote the image upon his feet that were of iron and clay, and brake them to pieces. 35Then was the iron, the clay, the brass, the silver, and the gold, broken to pieces together, and became like the chaff of the summer threshingfloors; and the wind carried them away, that no place was found for them: and the stone that smote the image became a great mountain, and filled the whole earth. 36This is the dream; and we will tell the interpretation thereof before the king. 37Thou, O king, art a king of kings: for the God of heaven hath given thee a kingdom, power, and strength, and glory. 38And wheresoever the children of men dwell, the beasts of the field and the fowls of the heaven hath he given into thine hand, and hath made thee ruler over them all. Thou art this head of gold. 39And after thee shall arise another kingdom inferior to thee, and another third kingdom of brass, which shall bear rule over all the earth. 40And the fourth kingdom shall be strong as iron: forasmuch as iron breaketh in pieces and subdueth all things: and as iron that breaketh all these, shall it break in pieces and bruise. 41And whereas thou sawest the feet and toes, part of potters' clay, and part of iron, the kingdom shall be divided; but there shall be in it of the strength of the iron, forasmuch as thou sawest the iron mixed with miry clay. 42And as the toes of the feet were part of iron, and part of clay, so the kingdom shall be partly strong, and partly broken. 43And whereas thou sawest iron mixed with miry clay, they shall mingle themselves with the seed of men: but they shall not cleave one to another, even as iron is not mixed with clay. 44And in the days of these kings shall the God of heaven set up a kingdom, which shall never be destroyed: and the kingdom shall not be left to other people, but it shall break in pieces and consume all these kingdoms, and it shall stand for ever. 45Forasmuch as thou sawest that the stone was cut out of the mountain without hands, and that it brake in pieces the iron, the brass, the clay, the silver, and the gold; the great God hath made known to the king what shall come to pass hereafter: and the dream is certain, and the interpretation thereof sure. (Daniel 2:31‑45).) The times of the Gentiles are thus running on, and Jerusalem is trodden down. After the Church is removed, as we here see, the Gentiles will still tread it down, and even when the Lord comes in glory with his saints, He will find Jerusalem compassed with armies, and then the end of “the times of the Gentiles” will have come. The Lord himself shall fight against these nations. (Zechariah 14:1, 21Behold, the day of the Lord cometh, and thy spoil shall be divided in the midst of thee. 2For I will gather all nations against Jerusalem to battle; and the city shall be taken, and the houses rifled, and the women ravished; and half of the city shall go forth into captivity, and the residue of the people shall not be cut off from the city. (Zechariah 14:1‑2).) He shall be the stone cut out without hands that shall fall upon the Gentile image, break it in pieces, and scatter it as the chaff of the summer threshing floors.
“THE FULLNESS OF THE GENTILES” is a very different thing. Israel, as a people, is now set aside, though a remnant is saved by the gospel according to the election of grace. Now God is making of the twain―Jew and Gentile― “one new man,” and in this work calling out of the Gentiles a people for His name. (Acts 15:1414Simeon hath declared how God at the first did visit the Gentiles, to take out of them a people for his name. (Acts 15:14).) When God shall have fully gathered out of every nation, kindred, people, and tongue, unto Himself, then shall the fullness of the Gentiles be come in—come in to God; and Israel now altogether under judicial blindness, except those to whom Christ is revealed, will then be the object of God’s peculiar care and blessing. Paul calls this a mystery, and he would not have saints be ignorant of it. He says, “that blindness in part is happened to Israel, until the fullness of the Gentiles be come in.” And so (that is, in this order) all Israel shall be saved: as it is written. “There shall come out of Sion the Deliverer and turn away ungodliness from Jacob; for this is my covenant with them when I shall take away their sins.” (Romans 11:25-2725For I would not, brethren, that ye should be ignorant of this mystery, lest ye should be wise in your own conceits; that blindness in part is happened to Israel, until the fulness of the Gentiles be come in. 26And so all Israel shall be saved: as it is written, There shall come out of Sion the Deliverer, and shall turn away ungodliness from Jacob: 27For this is my covenant unto them, when I shall take away their sins. (Romans 11:25‑27).) Thus we see that “the times of the Gentiles” and “the fullness of the Gentiles” are two very different things.
Our chapter, as we have seen, introduces us to the “holy city,” “the temple of God,” “altar,” and “them that worship” ―all Jewish elements: and a people recognized as worshipping not on Christian, but on Jewish ground, and oppressed by the Gentiles outside. At this very time, too God has His own special testimony. There are two witnesses. Their testimony is not of the heavenly calling, like ours, but they stand before the God of the earth, and assert His rights. They are like two olive trees for fruitfulness, and two candlesticks as bearers of light in the midst of gross darkness. They do not bear the testimony of the gospel of the grace of God, but a miraculous and righteous testimony, like that of Moses in the days of hardened Pharaoh, and Elijah in the time of infidel Ahab. They testify to the reality of the living God, and are clothed in sackcloth, under a deep sense of the dishonor done to His holy and blessed name; they have power to shut heaven that it rain not, and to turn water into blood, and smite the earth with plagues as often as they will. Moreover, they are not in the spirit of the grace of Christ, who prayed for his murderers, and returned blessing for cursing; but these witnesses are commissioned to execute vengeance on their enemies. This marks this testimony as coming on after the present gospel testimony shall have closed, and shews that the whole scene is characterized by Jewish and earthly righteous principles, and not the gospel of the grace of God. It is an important point to notice, because it proves that the gathering out of the members of the body of Christ by the gospel of the grace of God must have been finished before this very opposite testimony is introduced. We cannot conceive that God would command, and give power by His Spirit, to His servants, to “love their enemies” and “devour their enemies” at the same time. “If any man will hurt them, fire proceedeth out of their mouth, and devoureth their enemies: and if any man will hurt them, he must in like manner be killed.” Their testimony will continue for twelve hundred and sixty days, which is equal to about forty and two months, or three years and half; at the close of this the beast, or man of sin, is brought before us for the first time in the Revelation. “When they shall have finished their testimony, the beast that ascendeth out of the bottomless pit shall make war against them, and overcome them, and kill them.” To kill the body is all that man or Satan can do. Their dead bodies lie in the street of the city where our Lord was crucified, now comparable only to wicked Sodom and infidel Egypt; and both Jews and Gentiles look at their dead bodies for three days and a half, and will not permit them to be buried; and, as we might expect, these dwellers upon earth rejoice over them, make merry, and send gifts one to another, because these two prophets tormented them that dwelt on the earth. Elijah was said to be a troubles of Israel, and God’s true servants are a trouble to the world still, and ever must be, until Jesus is King over all the earth, and every knee bows to Him. But God is the God of resurrection; and this is an idea far beyond the human intellect to conceive; and, as the resurrection of our Lord Jesus from the dead struck the ungodly with utter confusion, so here again God’s own power in raising the dead, and shaking the earth, will turn the merriment and rejoicing of the ungodly into fear and distress. Resurrection has been, and will be, God’s way of vindicating His own servants, and of publicly demonstrating the reality of His own truth. These faithful martyrs may lie in the street, and appear only as worthless corpses and vanquished tormentors; but “after three days and a half the Spirit of life from God entered into them, and they stood upon their feet; and great fear fell upon them that saw them. And they heard a great voice from heaven saying unto them, Come up hither. And they ascended up to heaven in a cloud, and their enemies beheld them. And the same hour was there a great earthquake, and the tenth part of the city fell, and in the earthquake were slain of men seven thousand.” The effect of this was, that the survivors “were affrighted, and gave glory,” not to the God of the earth before whom these witnesses stood, and whose rights they contended for, but “to the God of heaven.” They were troubled and terrified, like many others have been, at what they saw and heard; but we do not read that they bowed to Jesus as the Lord of heaven and earth, and took refuge in Him as their Saviour. Oh, no; the scene forcibly reminds us of our Lord’s own testimony to the dire depravity of the human heart, which shews that if man rejects God’s own word, no visions or calamities will savingly arrest him. “If they hear not Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded, though one rose from the dead.” This scene closes the parenthetic announcement between the sounding of the sixth and seventh trumpets; and after the solemn statement, “The second woe is past, and behold the third woe cometh quickly,”
THE SEVENTH TRUMPET
sounds, and our souls are at once drawn from earth and its miseries to heaven and its joys. Heaven rejoices that the earth is rescued from the hands of man and Satan, and that the Lord Jesus himself, the rightful heir, takes possession of it. “The seventh angel sounded: and there were great voices in heaven, saying, The kingdoms of this world are become the kingdoms of our Lord, and of His Christ; and He shall reign forever and ever.” As usual, the elders, who delight in the exaltation of Jesus, are in intelligent communion with God about the things of Christ; therefore we find that “the four and twenty elders, which sat before God on their thrones, fell upon their faces and worshipped God, saying, We give thee thanks, O Lord God Almighty, which art, and wast; because thou hast taken to thee thy great power, and hast reigned.” The living creatures are not noticed sere. The consequences, as well as the attendants, of Christ taking the judgment and government of the earth into His own hands, follow the sounding of this trumpet. “Thy wrath is come;” for He will come, in flaming fire taking vengeance, and must reign till He hath put all enemies under His feet. “The nations were angry,” or have been full of wrath, but now it is the time of the wrath of the Lamb. “Every eye shall see Him... and all kindreds of the earth shall wail because of Him.” We also see that God’s servants the prophets, and the saints, are rewarded, and those that fear Him, both small and great; those that destroyed or corrupted the earth are destroyed; and the dead are judged. It is a brief sketch of the various acts of judgment during the reign of Christ, from the beginning of His taking the kingdom to the end of the millennium, when He shall have closed His judgments, and all men, both living and dead, will be brought into subjection to Him.
The chapter closes with the account of the temple of God being opened in heaven, the ark of the testament seen with the lightnings, voices, thunderings, earthquake, and great hail. Happy for our hearts to find, while judgment is poured out upon earth, the ark of the covenant is seep in heaven, witnessing to the everlasting stability of the believer’s hope. The ark tells us of the mercy-seat and the blood of sprinkling, which speaketh better things than that of Abel. This is rest. The precious blood, presented for us before God, always tells us of entrance into the holiest and perfect peace, whatever may be the trouble and distress around. While looking thus by faith at our Lord Jesus at the right hand of God, presenting His own perfect sacrifice there on our behalf, we not only can cry, Come, Lord Jesus! but we realize that
“Faith almost changes into sight,
While, from afar, she spies
Her fair inheritance in light
Above created skies.”
“Some rays of heaven break sweetly in
At all the opening flaws;
Visions of endless bliss are seen,
And native air she draws?”