John; or, the Apocalypse of the New Testament

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JOHN
OR THE
APOCALYPSE OF THE NEW TESTAMENT.
BY
PHILIP S. DESPREZ, B.D.
VICAR OP ALVEDISTOX, WILTS:
'AUTHOR Ob' 'DANIEL, ORTHE APOCALYPSE OFTHE OLD TESTAMENT.'
LONDON :
LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO.
1870.
All rights reserved.
IN SINCERE ADMIRATION OF THE VARIED AND IMPORTANT
CONTRIBUTIONS TO THEOLOGICAL LITERATURE
WHICH HAVE WON FOR THE DEAN OF WESTMINSTER
A FOREMOST PLACE AMONG THE DIVINES OF THE ENGLISH CHURCH,
AND WITH A STILL MORE PROFOUND AND PERSONAL
APPRECIATION OF THE FEARLESS CONSISTENCY WITH WHICH
HE HAS ADVOCATED THE PRINCIPLE OF RELIGIOUS TOLERATION IN
AN AOE MORE REMARKABLE FOR THE PROMOTION OF
ECCLESIASTICAL SUITS THAN FOR PERFECT INTELLECTUAL SINCERITY,

WHICH PURPOSES TO GIVE THE MEANING WHICH THE VISIONS
OF THE APOCALYPSE ORIGINALLY PRESENTED TO THE
MIND OF THE WRITER.
IS RESPECTFULLY INSCRIBED BY THE AITHOR
WITH THE NAME OF
ARTHUR PENRHYN STANLEY.
PREFACE
The writer conceives it to be due to those who
have felt, or may continue to feel, an interest in his
former work, to give the reasons which have led him
to change his views on the subject of Apocalyptic
interpretation. In bondage to the theory that the
Revelation was an infallible book, and that its mys
terious visions were capable of a real fulfilment, he
once imagined that it might be explained of events
which took place within the horizon of St. John's
own times, and laboured to accommodate its elastic
symbols to the facts of contemporaneous history.
With a near approach to the central idea of the
book, he interpreted it generally of the coming of
the Son of Man to judgement, although with a
deferential regard to the positive declarations of
Scripture he restricted the time of that stupendous
event to the destruction of Jerusalem. A principal
reason which led to the adoption of this theory was
that the Apocalypse is occupied with the destruction
viii Preface.
of a great city existing in St. John's own day, and
this the writer concluded could not be Rome, which
never fell in the manner described in the book, but
Jerusalem, whose ruin seemed minutely to corre
spond with the Apocalyptic prediction. The posi
tion he had assumed appeared to be strengthened by
the circumstance that the fall of this great city is
followed by the Advent of Messiah, the connection
between these two events harmonising with the
statements of the Synoptic Gospels that the de
struction of Jerusalem would be immediately suc
ceeded bythe coming ofChrist. This well-meaning,
although mistaken theory, which if it could have
been maintained would have gone far to reconcile
the predictions uttered by, or attributed to, Jesus,
with the actual course of events, he has been com
pelled, however reluctantly, to abandon. Impressed
with the conviction that the Apocalypse is not a
prophetic record of literal facts, but a sincere, al
though visionary, delineation of events which St.
John, in common perhaps with many of his country
men, supposed to be impending, he cannot again
look for secular history in the book, or believe that
the Seer of Patmos was infallibly guided in his
prognostications. He is now, therefore, no longer
careful to appear as an apologist for St. John by
labouring to reconcile at any cost the visions of the
Apocalypse with irrelevant facts, but is primarily
Preface. ix
anxious to discover its real meaning irrespectively of
the consideration that such freedom of exegetical
treatment may be prejudicial to the prophetic cha
racter ofthe Revelation itself. The task then which
the writer has undertaken in the following pages is
to inquire honestly, and without regard to any
foregone conclusion, 'what the author of the book
proposed to himselfin the description ofthe visions;
what events he himself supposed would happen, and
what expectations the readers of the work in the
age when it was written probably formed from it.'
And this task, ungrateful as it is, might not be
without corresponding benefits. It might indeed
disappoint millennarian expectations, and consign
them to the shadowyregion from which theysprang,
but it might also recall from the pursuit of these
extravagant theories to the sober duties and prac
tical aims of life. It might detract from the value
of the Apocalypse as a record of prophetic history,
but it might also suggest that the interpretations
hitherto given are mutually destructive of each
other, and exhibit a climax of exegetical weakness
without parallel in the range of Biblical exposition.
It might impair the authority of a book which the
ignorant yet pious multitude have hitherto regarded
* with superstitious reverence, but on the other hand
it might rescue it from the mischievous and un
charitable uses to which it has been too often
x Preface.
applied. It might take out of the month of contro
versial divines opprobrious epithets originallyapplied
to Antichrist and the False Prophet, but again it
might determine the fact that no adversary corre
sponding to the Apocalyptic description is to be
expected bythe Church. It might expose the signal
failure of the grand event of which the Apocalypse
is the principal exponent, but it might also lead to
the conclusion that the latter-day anticipations of
the early Church were not well founded, and the ac
knowledgment of error might be the first step
towards the development oftruth.
The study of the Apocalypse acquires at this time
additional interest from the circumstance that, with
a correct appreciation of its object it has been
selected to be read in the Revised Table of Lessons
for the season of Advent. Owing perhaps to its
extreme abstruseness, which consists not so much in
the mysterious nature of its symbols, which were
easy of comprehension to a contemporaneous age, as
in the difficulty of finding for them a fulfilment
which shall tally with the facts of history, the book
has not received from English Biblical students the
attention it deserves. But whatever may have been
the cause of previous neglect, it is plain that with
its introduction into the services of the Church the
questionofApocalyptic interpretationmustbeopened
afresh; and the truest solution will necessarily
Preface. xi
be the most orthodox, although it may not be most
in agreement with traditional opinions. The suc
cessful expositor of this much misunderstood, much
perverted, and much neglected book, must conduct
his examination not only on a logically severe and
critical basis, but in a spirit of complete indifference
to the consequences involved in the expression ofhis
sincere convictions. He will probably run counter
to systems of interpretation which have long as
sumed for themselves the prestige of orthodoxy ;
he will, perhaps, incur the odium which attaches to
the promoters of all new theories, whetherin science
or religion; but his want of popular sympathy will
be no proof that his conclusions are erroneous, or
that what is highly esteemed among men may not
be abomination in the sight of God.
CONTENTS.
PAGE
I. Date of the Apocalypse 1
II. Authorship of the Apocalypse 20
III. The Epistle to the Seven Churches .• . .39
IV. Opening of the First Six Seals 72
V. The Seventh Seal 90
VI. The Two Witnesses 113
VII. Antichrist 137
VIII. Babylon 154
IX. The Millennium 178
X. The New Jerusalem 193
XI. The Second Coming of Christ 208
XII. The Gospel of the Kingdom 232
JOHN
OR THE
APOCALYPSE OF THE NEW TESTAMENT.
CHAPTER I.
DATE OP THE APOCALYPSE.
It is almost superfluous to observe that the Apoca
lypse presents features ofmore than usual exegetical
difficulty. Independently of the mysteriousness
which attaches to writings of this kind in general,
the facility with which its symbols have been ac
commodated to persons and events widely distant
and distinct from each other is an indication not
only ofthe elasticity of which they are capable, but
affords a melancholy yet instructive exhibition of
the failure of ingenious conjecture when applied as
a key to symbolic teaching. It does not, however,
follow, because much that has been said or written
on this book is mere guess-work in defiance of
common sense as well as of sound rules of critical
interpretation, that no meaning is ever to be found
for it, or that emblems which to the first were easy
of comprehension should be unintelligible to the
light and research ofthe nineteenth century. If we
B
2 John; or, the Apocalypse ofthe New Testament.
have lost the key, as we have lost the knowledge of
some science with which antiquity was familiar, it
is perhaps because we have failed to realise the
mental exaltation experienced by the writer as well
as by those to whom the Revelation was sent. From
intimations scattered throughout the book, it would
appear that it was composed under the influence of
anticipations of an extraordinary and alarming cha
racter, that St. John believed himselfto be standing
on the eve of a terrible crisis, and that the very
time ofthe long-expected Advent had arrived. The
Revelation, we think, is simply the prophetic deli
neation of this stupendous event. Amidst all its
varied imagery, it is occupied principally with one
grand subject—the sudden and speedy Advent of
Messiah, and the phenomena which should ac
company that astounding parousia. The first page
utters the same warning as the last, and the last the
same as the first. In no other writing of the New
Testament is the event so graphically pourtrayed, or
its imminent and terrific character so clearly and
positively defined.
But whilst, in our opinion, the Apocalypse is
simply a pictorical representation of the coming of
Jesus at the end of the age then thought to be fast
approaching, the history of the book shows never
theless that a different view has been considered
worthy of attention, and the Revelation has been
interpreted of a series of historical events which
have happened in the world and in the church from
the days of St. John to our own times. The book,