THE LAMB STANDING ON MOUNT ZION
WITH
THE HUNDRED AND FORTY-FOUR THOUSAND
Revelation 14:1-5
In entering on these 'memories' of John's great Words and
Visions, we stated that it would be alike unprofitable and uninteresting to
attempt investigating many portions of the Apocalypse which have formed the
battle-ground of rival interpreters and conflicting interpretations; and
that we should confine ourselves to those which are alike more perspicuous
in meaning and replete with practical instruction. It was for this reason we
passed so cursorily in our last, the details of the first six
trumpet-soundings. We simply alluded, indeed, to the first four of these,
which had reference to God's judgments on the outer world, on the trees, the
sea, the rivers, the lights of heaven. The fifth and sixth trumpets were not
even mentioned. They referred to the outpouring of the Divine judgments, not
on material nature, but on living men; and consisted of the plague of the
locusts and the plague of the horsemen. Without attempting to dwell on
circumstantials, but simply to preserve continuity, we may link together in
a few sentences the intervening portions, occupying, as they do, four
chapters between the sixth trumpet-sounding and the beautiful passage which
opens upon us like a welcome gleam of heavenly sunshine in chapter 14.
At the close of the sixth trumpet there is inserted a
twofold vision—that of the mighty Angel holding in his hand "the little
Book," and of "the two Witnesses" prophesying in sackcloth. Then comes the
sounding of the seventh Angel's trumpet, to which we have already
particularly alluded. It evoked a song of triumph from the lips of Christ's
ingathered Church. Heaven was opened, and a disclosure made of "the Ark of
his Testament," the pledge and symbol of the inviolable security of the
glorified. The special theme of their song, however—the first outburst of
praise on this birthday of the Church-triumphant, being an ascription of
thanksgiving for the completion of God's righteous judgments on the
world—the symbols of bliss and joy were appropriately accompanied with "lightnings,
and voices, and thunderings, and an earthquake, and great hail."
With this imagery concludes another great act in the
apocalyptic drama. Yet, before the curtain falls, and before the terminating
scenes, in the outpouring of the seven vials, take place, there is inserted
a lengthened interlude—a great prophetic vision, complete in
itself—regarding the Church and her three enemies. The Church is represented
as a Woman arrayed in dazzling effulgence. The light of the midday sun is
her vesture; the moon (probably the crescent moon) is under her feet,
forming her sandals; and around her head is a tiara or coronal of twelve
stars, recalling the description in the Song of Songs, "Who is she that
looks forth as the morning? Fair as the moon, bright as the sun, and
terrible as a starry host with banners." She is further depicted as fleeing
into the wilderness, pursued and persecuted by a portentous monster—a great
red Dragon, having seven heads and ten horns, and a cluster of seven crowns
on his head. This we are specially told was Satan himself, the Prince of
Darkness, the arch-enemy of the Church and of mankind, "That old serpent
which deceives the whole world." Evicted by Michael and his angels from the
highest heavens, the dragon and his angels are represented as turning their
foiled and baffled rage against the Woman, and "making war with the remnant
of her seed." But the exiled and persecuted Church is shielded from the rage
of the destroyer. Eagle-wings are given her to fly farther still into the
recesses of the wilderness, where, like the great Prophet of Cherith, "She
is nourished for a time, and times, and half a time, from the face of the
serpent."
Again, as the Apostle-spectator stands on the sands of
Patmos, the Aegean waves rolling at his feet, he sees emerging from the
bosom of the deep, another hideous monster, somewhat akin and yet differing
from the former. This new fiendish beast has "seven heads and ten horns, and
upon his horns ten crowns, and upon his heads the name of blasphemy." These
heads and horns are the well-known symbols of world-power; and though
evidently referring, in the first instance, to the colossal dominion of the
Roman Empire, which, in the time of John, had from its Capitol on the Tiber
carried winged thunderbolts wide over the earth; yet they are by no means
restricted to this; but may rather be regarded as representative of all
the vast earthly empires which are hostile to Christ and His Church. To
this sea-monster Satan surrenders his throne and kingdom, making him his
substitute and viceroy; and terribly does the delegate fulfill the
commission by his blaspheming tongue and his war with the saints.
Once more, John beholds another—a third Beast—rising now,
not from the sea, but from the earth—one of hybrid form, half lamb,
half dragon; yet an emissary of the abyss and darkness, and confederate with
the sea-born Beast—wearing a pretended gentleness and lamblike meekness,
combined with the dragon's subtlety, cruelty, and mischief—a giant deceiver,
doing great wonders, performing false miracles, and arrogantly exacting
homage from "those who dwell on the earth." This has been generally supposed
(however interpretations may conflict in details) to represent that gigantic
religious machinery, in all its varied phases and protean shapes, first
Pagan then Christian, but which has attained its culmination in the
persecuting power and tyrannical usurpation of the Church of Rome—that
hybrid of simulated meekness and humility, the gentleness of the lamb in
combination with haughty pretension and cruel intolerance—the washer of
pilgrims' feet, yet the kindler of Inquisition-fires—the disposer of crowns
and kingdoms—the arch-ruler of men—the Vicar of God!
While the previous sea-monster was the representative of
brute force, secular despotism, the tyranny of sword and conquest, of
dungeon, and rack, and faggot—this latter is that of ecclesiastical
despotism, going forth among the nations with all deceivableness of
unrighteousness—its weapons moral and spiritual—its enthralled and crouching
victims—the depraved intellect, the enslaved conscience, the
distorted reason, the fettered will. We are reminded of the
description which the great Dreamer, in his "Pilgrim's Progress" puts into
the lips of Christian when in the Valley of the Shadow of Death, "While I
was musing, I espied before me a cave, where two giants, Pope and
Pagan, dwelt in old times, by whose power and tyranny the men whose
bones, blood, ashes, and mangled bodies lay there, were cruelly put to
death."
But in this mystic Book, vision is interlaced and
supplemented with vision. And as we have just described that of the Woman
and her three enemies as an appendage to the seven trumpet-soundings
preceding the opening of the vials, so the figure which we are now more
specially to consider, forms an epilogue or addition to this interjected
imagery; while it constitutes also a befitting introduction to the scenes of
final triumph and final vengeance which occupy the last chapters of the
Apocalypse.
The preceding revelations, so full of woe and sadness,
were calculated to depress and overwhelm the spirit of the Apostle. The
present is, as if a telescope were put into his hands, enabling him to
pierce the environing gloom, and obtain the assurance of ultimate safety;
or, to use the simile suggested by the wilderness where the persecuted
Church had fled, as if an oasis had suddenly been opened up to him in the
midst of the desert, with its wells and palm trees, telling of the welcome
refreshment and shade.
Perhaps the darkest part of the whole Apocalypse had now
been reached. The very heaven above, which, at the opening of the Book, was
radiant with visions of surpassing glory and resonant with song, brings
before the mind recent memories of conflict and the clang of battle. "There
was war in Heaven: Michael and his angels fought against the dragon, and the
dragon fought and his angels." The final expulsion of the Great Enemy from
the heavenly world seems to have been, in some mysterious way, connected
with the completion of Christ's Redemption-work on earth. "Now," says the
true Michael—the 'Man-child' of the prophetic vision, caught up unto
God, and to His Throne, "Now," says He, in anticipation of His ascension,
"shall the Prince of this world be cast out." "I beheld Satan as lightning
fall from Heaven." The same event had thus been celebrated in prophetic
strains: "You have ascended on high; You have led captivity captive."
And when that war was hushed, and the battle turned from
the celestial gates, it was only, as we have noted, for the cast out legions
to make earth the scene of their renewed unholy strife. If these judgments
on the Church had been the disciplinary chastisements of her Great Head,
John would have bowed with unfaltering trust. But it was a fearful
brotherhood and confederacy he beheld of the powers of human and satanic
evil—a compound of brute force and demon force; man, the tool and instrument
of hellish impulses, raging against the Lord and His Anointed. Satan was
marshaling the hosts of evil men; and from these duped, malignant human
agents the appeal was heard, "Who is like the Beast? who is able to make war
with him?" Well might the trembling Apostle exclaim, in words uttered by
David in a kindred hour of terror and despondency, "Let us fall into the
hands of the Lord, for His mercies are great, and let me not fall into the
hands of man."
It was, then, amid such gloomy picturings that the
Patmos-exile turned his eye from sea and earth and wilderness, to the
already well-known emblems of the Lamb, the four Living ones, the Elders,
the Throne, the Hundred and forty-four thousand. It deserves, moreover,
specially to be noted, in connection with the vision, that it is not to be
taken as a picture of the Heaven that is hereafter to be—the Heaven
of the completed Church-triumphant (that is reserved for future revelations,
which we shall come by and bye to consider); it is rather the Heaven of the
present—the calm world that now exists, when the earthly battle is
still raging, and the lower horizon is still black with tempests.
The first object in this new scene which arrests John's
attention is his beloved Savior—the great King and Head of the persecuted
Church. "I looked, and lo! the LAMB!" (so it with the definite
article)—"I looked, and lo! the Lamb!"—as if that symbol was now to
him a well-known and welcome one. He whom he had previously seen, in the
opening vision, in the midst of the Throne, adored by the ten thousand times
ten thousand and thousands of thousands, is now beheld "standing on Mount
Zion," set as King on His own holy hill. He had with Him, and around Him, an
assemblage of an hundred and forty-four thousand; having "His name" as well
as "His Father's name written in their foreheads."
It was expressly asserted in the preceding chapter, as
one blasphemous usurpation of the third Beast, or monster from the earth,
that "he causes all, both small and great, both rich and poor, free and
bond, to receive a mark in their right hand or in their forehead." This was
Satan, the great counter-worker, mimicking and counterfeiting the work of
God, as described in the previous sealing-vision, thereby deceiving, if it
were possible, the very elect.
John had just seen crouching nations stooping to the
usurper, and, allowing the degrading mark of vassalage to be put on their
foreheads. He looks up to the Church in glory. He sees the redeemed, with
the indubitable brand of a diviner vassalage, bearing in their bodies, (on
their foreheads,) "the marks of the Lord Jesus."
Then he listens to a strangely-mingled psalmody, whose
combined cadences come floating to his ear, as if it had been one voice from
Heaven. It was made up of 'many waters,' 'great thunder,' and 'the voice of
harpers harping with their harps.' It was the loudness of the thunder-peal
and of the ocean-waves, combined with the dulcet tones of the sweetest
musical instrument. The song he heard was as it were "a new song." We are
not told in what its newness or novelty consisted, nor what formed the theme
of its magnificent melodies; probably it would be an ascription of joyful
thanksgiving for their safe deliverance, on the part of those who had now
exchanged the pilgrim warfare for the pilgrim rest: those who,
with eagle-wings, had once taken themselves to the desert shelter, but who
had now soared to the heights of Heaven, and made their perch on the Tree of
Life in the midst of the Paradise of God. It may have been a song in which
was mingled a celebration of safety and joy, with the rehearsal of former
struggles—the trials they had patiently borne, the temptations they had
successfully resisted; or it may have been a song of heart-cheer and
encouragement directed to the toiling warriors and sufferers below,
anticipatory of a like sure triumph if faithful unto death; or it may have
been a song only "as it were" new, but which was really the ever old one—the
same which Abel sang at the gates of Eden, and which John had either sung
that day on the rocks of Patmos, or subsequently in his home at Ephesus,
"Unto Him that loved us, and washed us from our sins in His own blood!"
All the information he gives us regarding the song is,
that no man could learn it but the hundred and forty-four thousand. It could
not be understood or sung by the saintliest of human lips, inasmuch as, very
possibly, until the spirits of the just are 'made perfect'—until they are
ushered into their state of glorification—they cannot fully comprehend the
language of Heaven; those "unspeakable words which it is not lawful (or
possible) for a man to utter." Even this favored Apostle, in entering the
Temple above, would require his lips to be touched with the seraphic
live-coal, before they could be attuned to the meaning and melody of its
praises.
Such being the scene of worship in Heaven unfolded to the
eye of the Apostle, let us proceed to note the delineation here given of its
WORSHIPERS.
(1.) They are described as Redeemed (verse 3) "Who
were redeemed from the earth." And, again (verse 4), "These were
redeemed from among men." Not that modern amplification of
Scripture—that travesty of a revealed truth—which would read it, "the
redeemed of the earth," as indicating the universal ransom and
restoration of the race. But "the redeemed from among the earth"—the
ransomed elect—those represented in a former vision as specially
sealed, or in the preceding chapter as having overcome the red
dragon, (yes, all their foes,) by the blood, or "owing to the blood, of the
Lamb." In other words, they are God's own seven thousand (distinguished from
the Baal-throng), once hidden in the wilderness-caves of earth, now forever
in the clefts of the True Rock of Ages—safe from the windy storm and
tempest.
This warrant for the possession and occupancy of their
thrones and their crowns, occupies, as well it may, the forefront and
vanguard of their characteristics. It is the repetition, in another form, of
the words of a recent figure we specially considered, "Who have washed their
robes, and made them white in the blood of the Lamb." As on the earthly
mount of Transfiguration, so on this heavenly Zion, the Apostle recognizes
the theme of ecstatic conversation to be, "the death accomplished at
Jerusalem." Their New song is the song of Redeeming love. Redemption
has alone earned them a right to the description with which the vision
closes, when they are spoken of as being "without fault before the throne of
God."
(2.) The worshipers are represented as being undefiled.
Not only in this world were they justified by the blood, but they
were regenerated and sanctified by the Spirit of Christ. Not only had
they the righteousness imputed, but the righteousness implanted:
and one special element in that subjective righteousness here mentioned, is
that of chastity of life—virgin purity. How searchingly does the language of
the vision come home to every heart, with its deep corruptions and
impurities of thought and deed—making inquisition of those fleshly lusts
that war against the soul, which blunt and wound and defile the conscience,
and all the sensibilities of our higher natures, setting these on fire of
hell—the fierce antagonists to that holiness, without which, it is declared,
no one can see, and, doubtless, no one can enjoy, God!
How it brings down the sentence of withering condemnation
on those, whose unchaste imaginations and unchaste lives have converted
their souls (yes, these souls that were designed to be God's temple) into
chambers full of all pollution and sensual imagery—a den of foul beasts, a
cage of unclean birds—those whose every look is impurity, and who are as
reckless of the virtue and innocence of others as they are of their own! How
could any such, wallowing ever deeper in the mire, dream of joining that
unspotted band in the Heavenly Zion? How could these polluted lips think of
warbling the virgin-song of the undefiled? Those who are thus earthly,
selfish, sensual, devilish, would be as incapable of appreciating that
bliss, as the uncultured and untutored savage, to whom noise is alone
music, and gaudy tinsel is alone beauty, could appreciate the
exquisite harmonies of Mozart or Beethoven. Ascend to Heaven? join the
faultless choir before the throne? No, they are self-conscious that they
carry a chronic hell within them. The words which our own great epic
poet puts into the lips of Satan, are indorsed by such, as containing a too
truthful description and photograph of their own feelings and history: "Each
way I fly is hell—myself an hell!"
"Myself an hell!"—its fires already kindled—the hell of
fiendish, lustful, polluted thoughts, with their corresponding hell of
remorse and upbraiding—the eagles of vengeance already preying on the
carcass—the fabled lash of the Furies already descending—retribution already
begun.
On the other hand, blessed truly are "the undefiled, who
walk in the law of the Lord"—who have escaped the corruptions that are in
the world through lust; in the volume of whose heart the white leaves have
their virgin purity unblotted and unstained. You, too, who are mourning the
loss of those whose sun has gone down in early morning—who, full of high
promise, have perished "at the threshold-march of life"—rejoice in the
thought that they have "clean escaped"—that these lambs of the flock have
passed into the heavenly fold, with the fleece of early innocence
unpolluted. Before impurity stirred the well of pure thought, they have been
taken away, it may be, from much evil to come!
More blessed and honored, in one sense, are those—and
many such there are—who, by dint of resolute self-discipline and high
principle, have bravely fought the long fight, and come out of it unwounded,
unscathed; who with unabashed face can make the appeal to the great
Heart-Searcher, of a good conscience and a pure life: but safer at least are
they, who, away from the sudden gusts and hurricanes of temptation, have
soared early upwards, and, with unsoiled plumage—unruffled wings,
have sank into the clefts of the Rock forever. If they had been allowed to
remain longer on earth, who can tell but some crude storm might have
blighted fair promise and belied fond hopes? But before summer's sun could
scorch, no, before spring's frost could nip one bud or blast one leaf or
blossom, the Great Giver, in mercy, took the flower to His own safer
paradise—gave the summons,
"Waft her, angels, to the skies,
Far above yon azure plain;
Glorious there like you to rise,
There like you forever reign."
Oh! what would thousand and thousands give, who are now
drifting, as miserable, shattered wrecks on life's sea—health, innocence,
purity, gone—what would such give, to be as they are, inheriting in all its
grandeur that best beatitude, "Blessed are the pure in heart, for
they shall see God!"
"She is not dead, the child of our affection,
But gone into that school,
Where she no longer needs our poor protection,
Where Christ Himself does rule.
"In that great cloister's stillness and seclusion,
By guardian angels led,
Safe from temptation, safe from sin's pollution,
She lives whom we call dead."
(3.) They are represented as following Christ
(verse 4) "They follow" (or literally 'who are following') "the Lamb
wherever He goes." They are seen indeed, in common with their great Lord,
"standing" on the Mount Zion. But it is standing ready for His
service—prepared to embark in ministries of holy love for Him—and, along
with "the armies which are in Heaven," spoken of in a subsequent vision,
ready to follow Him "upon white horses, clothed in fine linen, white and
clean." Is this our conception of a future state of bliss? Not a
dreamland of inaction, consisting only of a series of negations, the absence
of the sad catalogue of evils which beset us here; but do we realize it as a
sphere of holy, spiritual activity, where we shall be enlisted in embassies
of love and loyalty to the dear Lord who redeemed us? If so, Heaven—the
manhood of our spiritual being—should have, at all events, its
childhood on earth—what we are to be, should have its dim and
shadowy reflection in what we now are. If we are to follow the Lamb
in glory, that path of trustful and loving obedience should have its
commencement here on earth.
Is it so? Are we thus following Him—following Him as a
flock trustfully follows its shepherd? following Him, not fitfully or
capriciously—not at set times and seasons only, when the summer sky is
overhead, and the birds are on the boughs, and the valleys of life are
shouting for joy—but willing to follow Him when the sky is lowering—when the
birds have folded their wings, and these valleys of existence are shrouded
in mist and darkness—no patches of verdant grass to be seen, the music of no
still waters to be heard, yet ready to say, "Though He slays me, yet will I
trust in Him?"
Do we follow Him in the sense of seeking to be like
Him—to have our wills equivalent with His?—setting His great Life of
purity and obedience and self-sacrifice before us, and desiring that ours be
a feeble transcript of its spotless excellencies? Do we follow Him,
moreover, with the realizing thought before us of a Living Person?—not
as the votaries of a creed, linked to some dry and formulated dogmas
from which the great living 'life' has departed—but following, as these
undefiled and faultless on the Mount Zion are represented as doing—following
Himself—the Lamb of God—anticipating the time when "we shall be like
Him, for we shall see Him as He is," and when we shall be able to say the
words of Peter, "We are eyewitnesses of His majesty: we are with him in the
Holy Mount!"
(4.) One other characteristic of the hundred and
forty-four thousand is here mentioned—they are honest and sincere.
(verse 5) "And in their mouth was found no lie." It is the echo in the New,
of an Old Testament beatitude, "Blessed is the man. . . .in whose spirit
there is no deceit." The great Lord of all could pronounce no higher
encomium on an earnest seeker becoming a beloved follower, than this,
"Behold an Israelite indeed, in whom is no deceit." We need not consider
strange the special closing reference which is here made to this attribute
of heavenly bliss, when we think how much of the reverse is, alas!
manifested on earth—how much duplicity, double-dealing, lack of candor,
truthlessness, how much finessing and deceit, counterfeiting the pure and
the real with what is base admixture and alloy—pretentious blossom with an
utter failure of fruit; a world of appearances, mocking and deceiving; like
the apples of Sodom, beautiful to look upon, but perishable caskets
enshrining dust and ashes.
They who have grown thus weary with the world's
falseness and hollow hypocrisy will cease to wonder how, amid higher
elements of bliss, John finishes the record of one of the grandest of his
visions with the assertion regarding the redeemed—"And in their mouth was
found no lie, for they are without fault before the throne of God."
This entire figure, as we have seen, was primarily
intended as a vision of comfort for the Church in her dark days, when
the wilderness was her home and the dragon of persecution was
tracking her flight. She is encouraged to look forward to that bridal-hour,
when, as the affianced Spouse of the Heavenly Bridegroom, she shall come up
from the wilderness leaning on the arm of her Beloved, to sing her nuptial
song on the Hill of Zion.
But it is a vision of comfort and consolation also, to
every individual pilgrim and child of sorrow. It is a glimpse above and
beyond the clouds, into that calm world where the voice of wailing is no
more heard—"wasting nor destruction within its borders." It tells, that
whatever be the needed wilderness-discipline here, the redeemed of the Lord
shall at last come to Zion with everlasting songs on their heads. To all of
us, it is an answer to the question, 'What are the characteristics, what
the qualifications, of that heavenly citizenship?' "Who shall ascend
into the hill of the Lord? or who shall stand in His holy place? He who has
clean hands and a pure heart—who has not lifted up his soul unto vanity nor
sworn deceitfully." "He who walks uprightly, and works righteousness, and
speaks the truth in his heart." "He shall receive the blessing from the
Lord, and righteousness from the God of his salvation."