the earth, and them that dwell therein, to worship the first beast; but to do this as bearing this character, “whose deadly wound was healed.”[1] It is in this restored state or headship-form of government
- ↑ The trials under the beast are distinct from the mere preservation of purity; and the final warning to have nothing to do with the beast, comes after the announcement of the fall of Babylon. Hence we have the celebration of the hundred and forty-four thou- sand, who have kept themselves pure; and afterwards distinct, those who have got the victory over the beast. It does not follow that some of them may not have been involved in both trials, or have kept themselves from one, and suffered under the other, but they are treated as distinct subjects; and there may be those who are under the trial of the beast’s actings, preparatory to his final conflicts in Judea, who have never been in the circumstances, at any rate fully, of the hundred and forty-four thousand. They are numbered before Babylon falls. The warning against the beast has its peculiar force after. That the thirteenth chapter has had accomplishment in the protracted period of years, may easily be understood; and if applied to what is closing, its application is rather preparatory, not final; when the second beast falls, as a false prophet merely (his secular character as a beast gone), this change has taken place in him; he has lost his secular character and power as a beast, and is merely a false prophet. It seems to me that all this is previous to the last actings of Antichrist in Judea as the wilful king: they are quite distinct in character. This is preparatory in order to bring them, the dwellers on earth, into his subjection, and carry them with him. The whole, save the period of his blasphemous continuance, is not here date, but character or doings. He may draw after him the Gentile dwellers upon earth in this ‘way ; and, when in the land, the same process may locally and specifically continue there. The only date to the second beast is the restoration of the wounded (as I suppose) imperial head.
