READING CIRCLE STUDY by Stephen N. Haskell

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Dec 18, 1900

READING CIRCLE STUDY

By Stephen N. Haskell

Eighth Chapter of Revelation

S. N. H.

The grandest event the universe of God will ever behold is the second coming of Christ to take His people to himself. It is to this event that the first verse of chapter eight brings us. Then, and then only, do the Scriptures speak of a time when there is silence in heaven. One-half hour, prophetic time, is seven days. The “one hundred and forty-four thousand” and the innumerable company enter the cloud together, and are seven days ascending to the sea of glass. See “Early Writings,” page 12.

Christ comes “in His own glory, and in His Father’s, and of the holy angels.” Luke 9: 26. He is escorted by every angel in glory. Matt. 25: 31. All of these have been ministering spirits to the saints in the earth. Heb. 1: 13, 14. “And He shall send His angels with a great sound of a trumpet, and they shall gather together His elect from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the other.” Matt. 24: 31. God, seated upon His angelic throne (Ps. 18: 9, 10; Eze. 1: 26-28), comes with Christ. Titus 2: 13. He comes with twenty thousand chariots, even thousands of angels, and the Lord in the midst, as in Sinai. Ps. 68: 17. The scene upon Sinai, at the giving of the law, is the only event that compares with the second coming of Christ. “There, Christ and the Father, standing side by side upon the mount, with solemn majesty proclaimed the ten commandments, placing in the very center of the decalogue the Sabbath command.” “The Lord came from Sinai, and rose up from Seir unto them; He shined forth from Mount Paran, and He came with ten thousands of saints: from His right hand went a fiery law for them. Yea, He loved His people; all His saints are in thy hand: and they sat down at thy feet; every one shall receive of thy words.” Deut. 33: 2, 3.

This is an object lesson of the time when “the glory of the celestial city streams from the gates ajar. Then there appears against the sky a hand holding two tables of stone folded together. Says the prophet, ‘The heavens shall declare His righteousness; for God is judge himself.’ That holy law, God’s righteousness, that amid thunder and flame was proclaimed from Sinai as the guide of life, is now revealed to men as the rule of judgment. The hand opens the tables, and there are seen the precepts of the decalogue, traced as with a pen of fire. The words are so plain that all can read them. Memory is aroused, the darkness of superstition and heresy is swept from every mind, and God’s ten words, brief, comprehensive, and authoritative, are presented to the view of all the inhabitants of the earth.”—“Great Controversy,” page 639. Ps. 98: 2; Isa. 51: 7; Ps. 119: 172. “And when the blessing is pronounced on those who have honored God by keeping His Sabbath holy, there is a mighty shout of victory.” It is thus God honors the remnant, the one hundred and forty-four thousand, who have kept His law, in the eyes of those who have triumphed over them.

As when Christ ascended with the wave sheaf, so now “there is the throne, and around it the rainbow of promise. There are cherubim and seraphim. The commanders of the angelic hosts, the sons of God, the representatives of the unfallen worlds, are assembled. The heavenly council, before which Lucifer had accused God and His Son, the representatives of those sinless realms over which Satan had thought to establish his dominion,—all are there to welcome the Redeemer,” with His triumphant throng, that innumerable company. Those who have been torn asunder by the ruthless hand of death have met in the air, around their great Deliverer. Some had been burned at the stake; others had perished in dungeons; others had been buried in the sea. Happy families, rent asunder by the cruel shafts of death, are now around Christ, united. Husbands and wives, parted in this life, and who slept in Jesus, now meet at the voice of Him who died for them. Oh, what a meeting that will be! Friends will recognize friends. All will unite in thanksgiving and praise to Him who died and rose again, and has now come to give them everlasting rest and peace. Pain is all over. The cruel monster death has no more power over them. “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 past away.” Rev. 21: 4. This is heavenly reunion. Together for seven successive days they are traveling to their glorious home. Reader, will you be there? These are some of the blessings found at the opening of the seventh seal.

The last act of Christ for them in His mediatorial work was to take the golden censer and offer His own righteousness, with the prayers of all the saints, upon the golden altar, which was before the throne. The smoke of the incense, “the righteousness of Christ” with the prayers of the saints, ascended up before God out of the angel’s hand. Vs. 3-5. At this time those who had been the subjects of labor are converted, as for some cause prayers for them could not be answered before. “Then I saw many embrace the message of the third angel, and unite their voice with those who had first given the warning, and they honored God by observing His sanctified rest-day.”—Spiritual Gifts, in “Early Writings,” pages 118, 115. Prayers of parents for children, and children for parents, will then be answered. Those who offered the prayers may be quiet in death; but the prayers are lodged on heaven’s altar, and will be answered before the censer is thrown down.

For an exposition of the sounding of the four trumpets in verses 5-13, the reader is referred to “The Seven Trumpets,” published at the Review Office, as it is impossible to present them here. They refer to the breaking up of the Roman Empire by the northern barbarians.

It was the Romans who put Christ to death upon the cross, and also brought upon God’s people every torture possible for human demons to bring upon man. A sure retribution follows wickedness, whether in nations or in individuals. The Roman Empire as it was is no more. The divided state of Rome is shown by the divided state of Europe. The symbolic language here used is a vivid description of what John saw in vision, and which met its fulfillment in those barbarians who showed no mercy to their enemies. Fire and destruction by land and by sea came upon that empire until it was destroyed. In A. D. 330 the capital was removed from Rome to Constantinople. Seven years later the empire was divided into three parts. This explains the expression “the third part,” which was one of these divisions. The first trumpet represented Alaric at the head of the Goths, in A. D. 395. The second trumpet referred to Genseric, whose warfare was by sea, and who on one occasion destroyed over eleven hundred war-vessels in one night, like a great burning mountain cast into the sea. The third trumpet referred to the destructive work of the Huns under Attila, which fell, like a burning lamp, upon the regions of the Alps, the fountains of waters. The fourth trumpet is indeed the death knell to the Roman government: emperors, or the sun; consuls, or the moon; and the senators, or the stars, are now in one-third part darkened, and the mistress of the world no longer sits in the proud city of the seven hills. But a more subtle power is soon to take her seat and wield a mightier scepter than had ever been in the hand of pagan Rome. The chapter closes with a special proclamation of woe to the world during the sounding of the three following trumpets.