Notes on the book of Revelations/Chapter 8

by John Nelson Darby

Layout 2

 

The seventh seal gave occasion to the definite results of the state of things introduced by the fifth. There were those who had come out of great tribulation, and were fully owned—their robes were “white in the blood of the Lamb.”

The seventh seal, once opened, we hear no more of the Lamb. The Church, as a dispensation, had ceased to be in a suffering state.^[1] Of the seventh seal nothing could be directly said—heaven could say nothing—man perhaps much; but his thoughts are not as God’s thoughts. The owning^[2] of Christianity could not be condemned—the putting the Church into the world, its real effect, could not be celebrated. There was silence in heaven. But on this state of things, which heaven could not own at all, secret providence soon began to act. The angels began sounding. It was an action, then, ab extra in the providential state of things by angelic ministrations of providence, not in the known relationship of a suffering Church, and the world opposed, as it had crucified the Head. The growth of apostasy is traced, not in this second part, but in the third, as having its own importance.

But there was a feature in this not yet noticed: mixed, as they might be, in a certain sense in spite of themselves, with the world, the prayers of the saints had not ceased, and much incense was given to the angel of the altar to add to them, or give them savour and efficacy with God.^[3] The High Priest himself wears the angelic character here: the nearness of relationship, and completeness of all in heaven as governing on known principles (known by man in the Church as his own to go upon) were gone.

This is the first mention we have of the altar of incense. The souls were under the altar of burnt offering as whole burnt offerings. Now, it was the whole resourse of the saints to cry to God. The answer was judgments from the holiness of God against evil: and the definite course of disasters prepared to pursue its progress. We have, thus, at the close or at the beginning of the periods, an ac- count of the state of the saints during the period, i.e. as to the principle of the dispensation in the period. The trumpets then, would be the judgments of God upon the mingled state of things, in which the saints had ceased to suffer,^[4] and be (dispensatorily) identified with the character of the Lamb, in answer to the secret prayers of the remnant offered up as a sweet savour by the secret action of the Angel of the Covenant; but the known dealings externally, upon principles which the Church could explain on the character of its existence.

There was alarm—the powerful acting of God in men’s spirits in terror—and a convulsion in the condition of the earth; then the progressive course of judgments;—

On the grandees, and universal prosperity and glory of man, by heaven-sent judgments.

Then, destruction by judgment, through power on the mass of extern nations.

Then some apostate power polluting and embittering the very sources of the moral popular condition.^[5]

Then, the Supreme authority smitten; but this in a confined sphere with all dependant or subordinate light or authority.

There is then a term introduced, not previously used, save in the address to the Church of Philadelphia, “Woe to the inhabiters of earth!” an expression, I apprehend, taken from Isaiah xxiv., and used in the Apocalypse in contrast with dwellers in heaven, i.e. persons within the range of the prophetic earth, or scene of God’s immediate moral dealings, but not a stranger or sojourner there, i.e. a spiritual, heavenly-minded man, but dwelling there. In chapter xii., it is contrasted with “Rejoice ye heavens, and ye that dwell in them. Woe to the inhabiters of the earth and of the sea;” (compare Eph. i. at the close, and chap. ii.) Here accordingly, we have the three last trumpets announced as woes to these inhabiters of the earth. The rest might be providential judgments on the condition of things. These took up these earthly-minded people—people fixed upon earth. Note, when the saints, though in supplication live, as to dispensation, not in suffering, but mixed up with the world, they^[6] partake externally, and therefore in spirit sensibly, of the trouble and sorrow of the judgments that come; and come, it may be, just as wholesome chastenings, or at least warnings, in answer^[7] to their prayers; and this in principle may, I believe, quite go on now. But there are judgments afterwards specially on these earthly-minded, the form in which they become now characterized, when, after the patient (and separating) chastenings of God, they are fixed in this character. Then come positive judgments on them specifically.

1. Or an expectant state as to themselves: looking at the close. They had no longer to say “How long?” though the judgment might not yet be actually come.
2. So as regards the crisis, the heavens, as now filled by the saints, had no part in the Son of man’s judgment. Their armies which are in heaven will follow Him; but these were the preparatory judgments of God’s supreme providential power, in which the saints have no part at all; they could not open the bottomless pit to let the locusts out and Apollyon loose. They have the mind of Christ, and thus the character and ways of God in the Son of man, not his supreme government, though that ministers to them. It is entirely beyond them, and of that the trumpets are a part; the announcement of God’s sovereign dealings and government, not His ways and purposes with them,
3. Hence I apprehend in the crisis this would be the intercession of the High Priest for those left on the earth—saints after (as we have been before led to see) the rapture of the Church—saints then connected with the condition of the earth.
4. Their corporate suffering was not characteristic of the contents of the trumpets, which dealt in judgments on those not saints; and there was no recognition of their present union and identification with the Lamb, though individually they might be so.
5. There is no symbol more difficult than the various uses of water. Living water is the Spirit; but as this acts by the word, water (not exactly living water) is doctrine, and in a good sense the word; but waters are peoples, tongues, nations and languages, and the sea the unformed mass of them. Hence rivers seem the different compartments of them, as “whose land the rivers have spoiled.” But I take it, water is always viewed as under active moral influences of some sort, when living (it may be) in power; when the sea, it may be acted on merely; when fountains, it may be the spring of their influences, as the rivers would be their course; and therefore, according to the form of its use it would be the source of, or effects of these moral influences on the mass of the population, what we call the people: and hence, the moral popular condition as a whole, the respective form of water indicating its particular character. The springs of waters, the sources of this influenced condition:—“From the fountain of Israel,” looked at Israel as the source of the whole nation. Thus he stamped their relative character on all that flowed from Him: and hence, it might be applied perhaps directly to a teacher, or rather existing set of teachers—fountains of waters: for where they are, they characterise the people. As men say “Like people like priest.”
6. This will have its truth in the land withal in the latter day.
7. Compare the spiritual process of the prophet Habbakuk, which just illustrates this.