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REVELATION 19

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Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Michigan · Apr 16, 1901

FromReview and Herald, Vol. 78, No. 16.

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REVELATION 19

By Stephen Nelson Haskell

S. N. H.
THE nineteenth chapter is a continuation of the subject of the eighteenth, which is the vindication of God in the judgments that come upon this world and upon Babylon the great, with her daughters. “I heard a great voice of much people in heaven, saying, Alleluia; salvation, and glory, and honor, and power, unto the Lord our God.”
The first six verses embrace the vindication of God’s judgment before every intelligent being in the universe. The seventh verse is an announcement of rejoicing because of the event that has taken place in the heavenly sanctuary, the marriage of the Lamb. The marriage represents the reception of the kingdom by Christ. Dan. 7:13, 14. The holy city, the New Jerusalem, which is the capital and metropolis of the kingdom, is called “the bride, the Lamb’s wife.” The angel said to John, “Come hither, I will show thee the bride, the Lamb’s wife. And he carried me away in the Spirit,” says the prophet, “and showed me that great city, the holy Jerusalem, descending out of heaven from God.” See “Great Controversy,” page 426.
The bride is arrayed in fine linen, clean and white, which is the righteousness of saints. The marriage supper is prepared, and blessed is every soul that is called unto it. The tenth verse tells how the prophet was affected when he saw all this; he fell at the angel’s feet to worship him, but the angel said: Do it not: I am thy fellow servant; I am the fellow servant of thy brethren that have the testimony of Jesus. The testimony of Jesus is the Spirit of Prophecy. The final war will be made with the remnant that keep God’s commandments, and have the testimony of Jesus Christ.
The eleventh verse and onward tells of the marshaling of the nations against Christ as He appears in this world. The battle with the truth and the word of God, which is lived out by the Lord’s people, becomes personal. The armies of heaven, the angels, the inhabitants of unfallen worlds, and God himself, are witnesses of this final conflict between truth and error.
An angel stands in the sun, and cries with a loud voice to the fowls that fly in the midst of heaven, to gather themselves unto the supper of the great God. Note the wide contrast between this and the marriage supper. There, a table, miles in length, is spread with fruit of the heavenly kingdom, and blessed are they that are called to that supper. Here, behold the slain from one end of the earth even to the other end of the earth. The birds of the air eat the flesh of kings, and the flesh of captains, and the flesh of the mighty men, and the flesh of horses, and of them that sat on them, and the flesh of all men, both free and bond, both small and great; for in the final conflict the whole world is led under the generalship of the Beast and the false prophet, which is the United States. They deceived those that worshiped the Beast and his Image by means of those miracles which they had power to do. These two powers, leading the world, were cast alive into the lake of fire burning with brimstone. This is the first taste of what they will fully receive at the second resurrection.
“The Lord cometh out of His place to punish the inhabitants of the earth for their iniquity: the earth also shall disclose her blood, and shall no more cover her slain.” “And this shall be the plague wherewith the Lord will smite all the people that have fought against Jerusalem: Their flesh shall consume away while they stand upon their feet, and their eyes shall consume away in their holes, and their tongue shall consume away in their mouth. And it shall come to pass in that day that a great tumult from the Lord shall be among them; and they shall lay hold every one on the hand of his neighbor, and his hand shall rise up against the hand of his neighbor.”
In the mad strife of their own fierce passions, and by the awful outpouring of God’s unmingled wrath, fall the wicked inhabitants of the earth,—priests, rulers, and people, rich and poor, high and low. “And the slain of the Lord shall be at that day from one end of the earth even unto the other end of the earth: they shall not be lamented, neither gathered, nor buried.” At the coming of Christ the wicked are blotted from the face of the whole earth—consumed with the spirit of His mouth, and destroyed with the brightness of His glory. Christ takes His people to the city of God, and the earth is emptied of its inhabitants. “Behold the Lord maketh the earth empty, and maketh it waste, and turneth it upside down, and scattereth abroad the inhabitants thereof. . . . The land shall be utterly emptied, and utterly spoiled: for the Lord hath spoken this word. . . . The earth also is defiled under the inhabitants thereof; because they have transgressed the laws, changed the ordinance, broken the everlasting covenant. Therefore hath the curse devoured the earth, and they that dwell therein are desolate: therefore the inhabitants of the earth are burned.”
The whole earth appears like a desolate wilderness. The ruins of cities and villages destroyed by the earthquake, uprooted trees, ragged rocks thrown out by the sea or torn out of the earth itself, are scattered over its surface, while vast caverns mark the spot where the mountains have been rent from their foundations.
Now the event foreshadowed in the last solemn service of the great day of atonement, takes place. When the ministration in the holy of holies had been completed, and the sins of Israel had been removed from the sanctuary by virtue of the blood of the sin offering, then the scapegoat was presented alive before the Lord; and in the presence of the congregation the high priest confessed over him “all the iniquities of the children of Israel, and all their transgressions in all their sins, putting them upon the head of the goat.” In like manner, when the work of atonement in the heavenly sanctuary has been completed, then, in the presence of God and heavenly angels and the host of the redeemed, the sins of God’s people will be placed upon Satan; he will be declared guilty of all the evil which he has caused them to commit. And as the scapegoat was sent away into a land not inhabited, so Satan will be banished to the desolate earth, an uninhabited and dreary wilderness. See “Great Controversy,” pages 656-658.
“To God’s people, the captivity of Satan will bring gladness and rejoicing. Says the prophet: ‘It shall come to pass in that day that the Lord shall give thee rest from sorrow, and from thy trouble, and from the hard service wherein thou wast made to serve, that thou shalt take up this proverb against the king of Babylon [here representing Satan], and say, How hath the oppressor ceased! . . . The Lord hath broken the staff of the wicked, the scepters of the rulers; that smote the peoples in wrath with a continual stroke, that ruled the nations in anger, with a persecution that none restrained.’”—“Great Controversy,” page 660.