season, until their fellow servants also, and their brethren, that should be killed as they were, should be accomplished." They afterward appear among the multitude of the blessed, with palms of victory in their hands, and clothed in white robes. "And one of the elders answered and said unto me, What are these, which are arrayed in white robes, and whence came they? And I said unto him, Sir, thou knowest. And he said unto me: These are they which come out of great tribulation, and have washed their robes, and made them white in the blood of the Lamb. Therefore are they before the throne of God, and serve him day and night in his temple and he that sitteth on the throne shall dwell among them. They shall hunger no more, neither thirst any more, neither shall the sun light on them, nor any heat; For the Lamb, that is in the midst of the throne, shall feed them, and shall lead them unto living fountains of water, and God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes." : Such was to be the glorification of the martyrs, for whose consolation the book was especially written. The first enemy of the church, Judaism, being destroyed, there remained Paganism and the Roman power. From the seventh to the nineteenth chapter, the struggle between Christianity and Idolatry and the civil power, is variously represented, sometimes the latter taking the form of a beast and false prophet, and sometimes of a woman clothed in scarlet. At last, in the nineteenth chapter, Christ is represented to be victorious over all his foes, and he who went forth at the opening of the vision on a white horse, conquering and to conquer, returns in triumph. "And I saw heaven opened, and behold, a white horse, and he that sat on him was called Faithful and True. And he was clothed with a vesture dipped in blood, and his name is called The Word of God. And the armies that were in heaven followed him upon white horses, clothed in fine linen, white and clean." Then follows a description of the consummation of all things, when the wicked shall be punished, and the righteous made forever happy; and the abode of happiness is described after the Jewish conceptions, as the new Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven, filled with everything that can minister to eternal delight. "And I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth were passed away. And I, John, saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down from God, out of heaven, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a great voice out of heaven saying, Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and he will dwell with them, and they shall be his people, and God himself will be with them, and be their God. And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes, and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain, for the former things are passed away." Such, then, is the general prophetical and symbolical aspect of the book of Revelation, a most magnificent and astonishing production, which for gorgeousness and sublimity far transcends any other composition in existence. I now turn to its doctrinal bearings. It has been considered as a stronghold of the doctrine of the Trinity, insomuch that not a few consider it to be conclusive upon that subject. It will be the purpose of the remainder of this lecture to show you that precisely the opposite is the fact. God is represented through the whole, as one, undivided, and supreme, alone possessing the essential attributes of Deity. Jesus Christ is represented as exalted to the first dignity in heaven, after the one Jehovah, but still as a being distinct, inferior, and dependent for all his attributes on Jehovah. Then, wherever you look, you see no such person as the Holy Spirit, which certainly ought not to be the case if it be a fact that such a person actually exists in heaven. The nearest approach to personality, is seven spirits before God's throne; and if these are all persons, there are nine persons in the Deity, instead of three. We begin then with the very first sentence, and we say that it overthrows every Trinitarian idea to be derived from the whole book. "The revelation of Jesus Christ which God gave unto him." Consider for a moment what facts this language involves. Here is Christ exalted to heaven, and has been for at least thirty years, and possessing all the divine attributes that he ever will possess, God, if he ever was, or ever will be, and yet excluded from Deity both by the language and by the fact. To say that God gave Jesus Christ a revelation, denies him to be God, in so many words, and denies him to be God, in the fact of its being needful or possible to make a revelation to him. One test of deity is the possession of omniscience. If you say that Jesus Christ could be told any thing past, present, or to come, you deny that he is God. The test of his being God by identity of being with God, is identity of consciousness. To be the same in any intellectual sense, there must be the same consciousness in both. If there is not this identity of knowledge between Christ and God, then it is in vain that you assert an identity of being, or that you assert that Christ is God in any sense. sons. Then we pass on to the salutation. In that you see the widest distinction maintained between Jehovah and Christ; and the Spirit, if personal at all, is seven per“Grace unto you and peace, from him who is, and who was, and who is to come," that is, from Jehovah, who alone possesses these incommunicable attributes of self-existence and eternity," and from the seven Spirits, which are before his throne," that is, God's throne. They can make no part of God, then, if they are before his throne, unless they are personifications of his attributes. "And from Jesus Christ." Let us consider the attributes by which he is distinguished, contrasted with those of Jehovah, “the faithful witness, the first-begotten of the dead, and the chief of the kings of the earth." No Person of a Trinity can be the first-begotten of the dead, or the chief of the kings of the earth. We now come to the doxology, which follows immediately after. Here the Trinitarian imagines that he makes a strong point. Here is a doxology to Christ. Is not this demonstration that he is God? If he is not God, how can he have a doxology without idolatry? Let us then take particular notice of the reasons for which ascriptions of praise are given him, and the relations which he is represented as sustaining to God. "To him that hath loved us, and washed us from our sins in his own blood, and hath made us kings and priests unto his God and Father." Such is the true reading of the text. Now a Person of the Trinity cannot wash us in his blood; and although he possibly might have a Father, he cannot have a God. Whatever degree of homage is given to him, is not paid to him as God, nor for anything that God could do. The very terms, then, of this doxology, are not such as belong to supreme Divinity, but shut him out from participation in supreme Divinity. It is proper to say, as we pass along, that the second Alpha and Omega, in the eleventh verse, have no authority, and are now rejected from the text by all parties. In the seventeenth verse, the phrase "the first and the last," though similar in appearance to Alpha and Omega, cannot, of course, be applied in the same sense, or to the same person, because immediately after he says, "I am he that liveth and was dead, and behold, I am alive forevermore." This, of course, cannot apply to Jehovah. The meaning is, "I am the only one, the first and the last, who died and rose again; as is confirmed by the rest of the sentence, "and have the keys of hell and death," have gone down through the gates of death, and come up again, and, therefore, can pass and repass at will. The next indication of doctrinal sentiment, is in the Christ there maintains the same relation to God and to man which he did when on messages to the churches. |