mighty revolutionary earthquakes, and filling the world with blood, slaughter, and desolation.
With these prophetical corroborations, we return to our text.
16-18. These three verses describe our Savior coming on a cloud and reaping the harvest of the whole earth, which are declared to be fully ripe.
You must bear in mind the logical connection in this chapter between the sowing and the reaping. While in a sense the sowing has been in progress in all bygone ages, the direct and pre-eminent allusion is to the present great and universal sowing by the Lord’s people in the present Holiness movement. How long this gospel sowing shall continue, till the Lord comes to reap His crop of saints, we know not; but the prophetical connection certainly does involve the conclusion that it will not be long.
THE GATHERING OF THE VINTAGE MEANS THE WICKED You will see from this chapter the contrastive results of preaching the gospel. Those who receive the message delivered by the holy evangels personified by the angel in the 6th verse, get saved, sanctified, robed, and ready to meet the Lord descending on the cloud in verse 14, constitute the harvest of saints which the glorified Savior will reap when He comes. Do not forget that these angels all represent heavenly influences, and are executives of the Divine administration. They are respectively the subordinates of the Holy Ghost.
17. “Another angel came out of the temple which is in heaven, himself also having a sharp sickle.” This is the angel of Divine retribution, destined to come upon all who reject the gospel of holiness, which is now, by the angel of the 6th verse, being preached in all the earth.
18. You see the angel described in this verse comes from the altar in
that the people have persistently, obstinately, and finally rejected heavenly fire, they are shut up to the solitary alternative of hell-fire.
Hence you see that this angel of heavenly fire flies down to earth and shouts aloud to the angel of retribution: “Thrust in thy sharp sickle and reap the great bunches of the vine of the earth, because her grapes are fully ripe.
19, 20. These two verses glowingly describe the awful doom of the people on the earth who reject the gospel of holiness, preached by God’s
ministers in the present revivals. God in great mercy has raised up the Holiness movement in every country under heaven. We know it is of God because it is everywhere; human agency cannot account for it. Last year I traveled in Europe, Asia, Africa, and about twenty States in America, everywhere meeting the heavenly influence of this wonderful revival. It is God’s last call to a doomed world. The thunders of his premillennial judgments are already shaking the nations. The time of retribution is nigh, when the angel will forsake his post beside the heavenly altars to herald the awful doom of earth’s impending ruin. We see, in these Scriptures, the angel of retribution thrust in his sickle, reap the vintage of a God-rejecting world, and cast it into the great wine-press of God’s terrible castigatory judgments, long due the wicked nations and fallen Churches of a God- forgetting world. The red grape juice gushing out of the wine-press emblematizes the blood flowing copiously from the wounded and the dying. Hence this is the awful doom destined to overtake the wicked in the oncoming tribulations.
The battle of Armageddon is here adumbrated in epitome. The blood flows to the horses’ trappings. In the East, war-horses are decorated with regalia, frequently hanging down below their knees. Such was the ornamentation of the noble Arabic steed rode by my armed escort (a Bedouin Arab) when I traveled -through the wilderness of Judea to the Dead Sea, River Jordan, and Jericho. The idea is that the battlefield will flow with rivers of blood, so as to crimson the horses’ regalia. Rome is to be the center of the battleground, which is to extend one thousand six hundred furlongs; i.e., two hundred miles. As Rome is the successor of Babylon, the persecutor of the ancient Church, she here symbolizes antagonism to the Divine government, and represents the apostate Church in all the world. The Holiness movement, symbolized by the angel in the 6th verse, is this day
preaching the gospel throughout the whole world with wonderful expedition. Hudson Taylor, with his eight hundred missionaries, is in China. Sanctified Bishop Thoburn, with his five Conferences, is in India.
Sanctified Bishop Taylor, with his twelve hundred sanctified missionaries, is in Africa. A. B. Simpson is fast scattering his sanctified missionaries throughout the heathen world. Last August, at Old Orchard Camp- meeting, in Maine, he raised seventy-two thousand dollars for missions at a single collection. The Salvation Army, with twelve thousand holiness preachers, belts the globe. Astounding is the velocity with which the Apocalyptic Angel — i.e., the Holiness movement — is flying to the ends of the earth preaching entire sanctification and the speedy coming of the Lord to all the nations on the face of the whole earth.
As you see in this chapter, the Lord will soon ride down on a cloud, reap the sanctified harvest, and take away His bride. Then the retribution angel comes down and reaps the vintage, which means the wicked who rejected the gospel of holiness and the Lord’s coming. You see this terrible
destruction of the wicked immediately follows the Lord’s harvest of the good. They both follow as legitimate sequences of the gospel sowing. The one class received it and were harvested into the heavenly garners; those who rejected it fell in the terrible and universal slaughter, symbolized by the vintage, with rivers of blood two hundred miles wide, and deep enough to crimson the trappings of the war-horses. Daniel graphically describes this terrible doom of a wicked world and a fallen Church (<270709>
7:9,10):
“I beheld till the thrones were cast down and the Ancient of Days did sit, whose garment was white as snow, and the hair of His head like the pure wool; His throne the fiery flame, and His wheels burning fire. A fiery stream issued and came forth before Him: a thousand thousand ministered unto Him, and ten thousand times ten thousand stood before Him. The judgment was set and the books were opened.”
This is not the final judgment, because you see, as you read on, that the Lord’s millennial kingdom follows, whereas the conflagration of the world will accompany the final judgment (<610210>
2 Peter 2:10). Hence, this is the premillennial judgment, in which the thrones of this world will all be cast down, preparatory for the King of kings to descend, establish His
kingdom, and reign forever. Whereas the Son will come in His glorified humanity, which ascended up from Mt. Olivet, and be visible to mortal eyes as He was then, the Ancient of Days here spoken of is the Father, who has no incarnation, and is consequently invisible.
The Father said to the Son, “Sit Thou on My right hand, till I make Thine enemies Thy footstool.” The Son still encumbers the intercessory throne at the right hand of the Father. He is Prophet, Priest, and King. On earth, He was the most indefatigable preacher — i.e., prophet — the world ever saw. Having finished His gospel ministry, He entered upon His priestly office in the capacity of high priest, offering His body on the cross, a sacrifice for the sins of the whole world. Then flying up to heaven, He sits down on the mediatorial throne at the right hand of the Father, there, by His intercessory prayers, to perpetuate His priestly office till He
descends to reign over the world. Meanwhile, the Father is administering the government of this world amid frequent castigatory judgments, which will finally culminate in the great tribulations, when the invisible Ancient of Days will sit upon the premillennial judgment-seat in this world, till all the thrones shall fall, kingdoms crumble, and Babylon topple to rise no more. Then the Son of man will come down in the clouds, take the scepter of the world from the hand of the Ancient of Days, and rule all nations forever. (<270713>
Daniel 7:13, 14.)
This exegesis is abundantly corroborated by the parable of our Savior in reference to the nobleman “who went away to a far country to receive a kingdom, and to return.” (<421911>
Luke 19:11-13.) While they heard these things, proceeding, He spoke a parable, because He is near unto Jerusalem, and they think that the kingdom of God is to appear immediately.
Therefore He said: “A certain nobleman went into a far country to receive a kingdom and to return.” This parable clearly, explicitly, and abundantly proves the hypothesis so currently and copiously set forth in all the prophecies relative to our Lord’s millennial reign. This cannot possibly be identified with His spiritual kingdom. Daniel says (<270721>
7:21, 22):
“I beheld, and the same horn — i.e., the pope — made war with the saints, and prevailed against them, until the Ancient of Days came and judgment was given to the saints of the Most High; and the time came that the saints possessed the kingdom.”
Now you know that every saint is already in possession of Christ’s spiritual kingdom. Hence you see this is bound to mean the temporal kingdom, which the saints will receive from the Ancient of Days when He shall have cast down all the usurpatious, rebellious, humanistic, Nimrodic thrones on the earth, both political and ecclesiastical, and thus prepared the way for His glorified Son to descend, sit down on the millennial throne, and reign from the rising of the sun to the going down thereof. It is an unquestionable fact that all of His disciples were on the constant outlook for His temporal kingdom. But we see clearly from this parable in
<421901>
Luke 19th that He has gone away to His Father in heaven to receive this contemplated kingdom, for which He taught us to pray, “Thy kingdom come.” He is to receive this kingdom from His Father, whose judicial reign on the earth will make His enemies His footstool. This parable proceeds to describe our glorious coming King, distributing the governments of the world among His saints, according to their respective ability, giving to one ten cities, to another five, et cetera. This is in perfect harmony with
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Daniel 7:22:
“Judgment was given to the saints of the Most High.”
The meaning of the word judgment, in this and many other Scriptures, is the government of the world. Hence Daniel and Luke, as well as Paul and John, positively certify, under the inspiration of the Holy Ghost, that the saints of God are going to possess the governments and become the rulers of the world, under the sovereignty of the glorified Christ in the coming kingdom. Lord, help us to be candid, honest, and true and fear to handle the word of God deceitfully. Our Christ is both man and God. His divinity reigns in His spiritual kingdom in the heart. His glorified humanity, filled with the divinity, will reign in the coming kingdom. So surely as He rode into Jerusalem on a donkey, He will ride in on a cloud. So surely as He hung on a cross, He will sit on a throne. Zechariah says: “His feet shall stand upon Mt. Olivet.