Historicist Only Protestantism Revealed in the True Structuring of the Revelation found

[Jerryhuerta]

Excerpt from Protestantism Revealed in the True Structuring of the Revelation found here.


Hardy breaks with the traditional historicists’ interpretation of chapters 4-5, which they see as a first-century phenomenon, but then he reverts to their view that the seven seals represent phenomena commencing with the first century. He continually breaks the linear narration with each set of septets: the seven seals, seven trumpets, and even the seven vials. In order to break with the traditionalists’ view of the throne scene in chapters 4-5 Hardy follows the developmental guideline in chapter 4:1,

In the same way, when Christ says, “Come up here, and I will show you what must take place after this” (Rev 4:1), He is not taking us back to an earlier age – to the first century for example. “Come up here” is a transition not from one time to another, but from one place to another. The events John sees in heaven are just beginning. It is the start of a long process.1​

Hardy deems Christ’s trumpet-like voice relating the “things which must be hereafter” as a developmental guideline that pertains strictly to the throne scene but not to the phenomena of the seven seals, trumpets, or vials.

After this I looked, and, behold, a door was opened in heaven: and the first voice which I heard was as it were of a trumpet talking with me; which said, Come up hither, and I will shew thee things which must be hereafter. (Revelation 4:1)​

Nevertheless, there is more extraordinary evidence to maintain that the developmental guideline does not pertain strictly to the throne scene but to what follows up to the last trumpet in chapter 11, Christ’s return. Only then, in chapter 12, is there a break in the linear narration to affirm recapitulation. The symbolism and narration of the judgment in Revelation 6-11 correspond to the last and highest manifestation of God’s judgment. As stated in the previous work, the four horse riders and the fifth seal led to the phenomenon of the last trumpet, which parallels the pattern of God’s judgments upon His people by their enemies, their obtaining mercy, and the punishment of their enemies in the Old Testament. Theologian Ernst Wilhelm Hengstenberg noted the same convergence concerning the book of Joel and Amos, and specifically God’s locust army,

The whole announcement of punishment and judgment upon the heathen nations has sense and meaning, only when, in the preceding context, there has been mention made of the crime which they committed against the Lord and His people. In that case, we have before us the three main subjects of prophecy,—God's judgments upon His people by heathen enemies, their obtaining mercy, and the punishment of the enemies. At the very beginning of chap. iv. (iii.) the sufferings of Israel, described in chap. i. and ii., and the judgment upon the heathen, are brought into the closest connection. According to chap. iv.1, 2, the gathering of the Gentiles is to take place at a time when the Lord will return to the captivity of Judah and Jerusalem, i.e., according to the constant usus loquendi (compare my Commentary on Psalm 14:7), when He will grant them, mercy, and deliver them from their misery.[1] But that this misery can be none other than that described in chap. i. and ii. appears simply from the fact, that this has been declared to be the close of all the judgments of God.2​

The narrative and symbolism in Revelation 6-11 parallel the pattern of God’s judgments upon his people by their enemies, their obtaining mercy, and the punishment of their enemies prophesied in the Old Testament. In this precedent, the trial or judgment upon God’s covenant people is illustrated as an army of locusts. Hengstenberg comments further on this trial by the locust in his thesis on Joel,

Chap. ii.2 is to be considered as indicating the reason which induced Joel to choose this figurative representation. The words, "There hath not been anything the like from eternity, neither may there be any more after it, even to the years of all generations," are borrowed, almost verbally, from Exodus 10:14. The prophet thereby indicates that he transfers the past, in its individual definiteness, to the future, which bears a substantial resemblance to it. What was then said of the plague of locusts especially, is here applied to the calamity thereby prefigured. From among all the judgments upon the Covenant-people (for these alone are spoken of), this judgment is the highest and the last; and such the prophet could say, only if the whole sum of divine judgments, up to their consummation, represented itself to his inner vision under the image of the devastation by locusts.3​

The trial by the locust is God’s highest and last judgment upon his people and represents the Day of the Lord conveyed in all the symbolism that we see in Revelation 6-11.


In support of this trial, God does nothing before he reveals it to the prophets (Amos 2:7), which we see in the commendation to the church of Philadelphia and warning to the rest of the world.

Because thou hast kept the word of my patience, I also will keep thee from the hour of temptation, which shall come upon all the world, to try them that dwell upon the earth (Revelation 3:10)​

The symbolism of the seals commences with the four horse-riders that represent God’s locust army on the Day of the Lord according to Joel 2:4.

And I saw, and behold a white horse: and he that sat on him had a bow… And there went out another horse that was red: and power was given to him that sat thereon to take peace from the earth… And I beheld, and lo a black horse; and he that sat on him had a pair of balances in his hand… And I looked, and behold a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him. (Revelation 6:2, 4, 5, 8)​

Blow ye the trumpet in Zion, and sound an alarm in my holy mountain: let all the inhabitants of the land tremble: for the day of the LORD cometh, for it is nigh at hand; A day of darkness and of gloominess, a day of clouds and of thick darkness, as the morning spread upon the mountains: a great people and a strong; there hath not been ever the like, neither shall be any more after it, even to the years of many generations. A fire devoureth before them; and behind them a flame burneth: the land is as the garden of Eden before them, and behind them a desolate wilderness; yea, and nothing shall escape them. The appearance of them is as the appearance of horses; and as horsemen, so shall they run. (Joel 2:1-4)​

The fire that devourers before the locusts is indicative of the Day of the Lord.

But the day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night; in the which the heavens shall pass away with a great noise, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat, the earth also and the works that are therein shall be burned up. (2 Peter 3:10)​

The trial by “fire” on the Day of the Lord is of the same nature that Peter conveys: the fire is indicative of suffering adversity and not a literal conflagration.

Beloved, think it not strange concerning the fiery trial which is to try you, as though some strange thing happened unto you: But rejoice, inasmuch as ye are partakers of Christ's sufferings; that, when his glory shall be revealed, ye may be glad also with exceeding joy. (1 Peter 4:12-13)​

The Day of the Lord also comes unexpected, as a thief in the night, as 1 Peter 4:310 states, above. Again, God does nothing before he reveals it to the prophets (Amos 2:7), which we seen in the warning to the church of Sardis.

And unto the angel of the church in Sardis write… Remember therefore how thou hast received and heard, and hold fast, and repent. If therefore thou shalt not watch, I will come on thee as a thief, and thou shalt not know what hour I will come upon thee. (Revelation 3:1, 3)​

The locust army is also illustrated to come as a thief in the night.

They shall run to and fro in the city; they shall run upon the wall, they shall climb up upon the houses; they shall enter in at the windows like a thief. (Joel 2:9)​

There is tremendous evidence that the developmental guideline in Revelation 4:1 does not pertain strictly to the throne scene but to what follows up to the last trumpet in chapter 11, Christ’s return. The narrative and symbolism in Revelation 6-11 parallel the pattern of God’s judgments upon his people by their enemies, their obtaining mercy, and the punishment of their enemies prophesied in the Old Testament. A great deal of the evidence is delt with in the publication, Thy Kingdom Come: Re-evaluation the Historicist’s Interpretation of the Revelation.4 However, it is not within the scope of this paper to convey all of the evidence. This paper aims to reveal the Protestant place in the church’s history and the ramifications on the structuring of the Revelation.


[1] Frank W. Hardy, Ph.D., “Historicism and the Judgment A Study of Revelation 4-5 and 19a,” Historicism.org, (August 8, 2006, Modified April 15, 2010), 2, 3. http://www.historicism.org/Documents/Lecture1Rev4-5.pdf

[2] Ernst Wilhelm Hengstenberg, Christology of the Old Testament, Vol. 1 (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1871) 320.

[3] Ibid.

[4]Marsue and Jerry Huerta, Thy Kingdom Come: Re-evaluating the Historicist's Interpretation of the Revelation, https://www.amazon.com/Thy-Kingdom-...rpretation/dp/1637673981/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0

 

[Jerryhuerta]

Excerpt from Protestantism Revealed in the True Structuring of the Revelation found here.

As we witnessed in Boyer’s futurist interpretation of the seven churches, he agrees with Hardy that the Second Great Awakening in the nineteenth century is represented as the Philadelphia era, and this era, starting with the twentieth century, is represented by the church of the Laodiceans,

The “open door” of the letter to the church in Philadelphia corresponds closely with the evangelistic and missionary movements of the nineteenth century. And the lukewarmness and materialistic self-sufficiency of the church in Laodicea describes well the present situation. It should be remembered that all types of churches are present in all periods, but one type is predominant and characterizes each period.1​

As to the reasons or motivations for the evangelical and missionary movements of the nineteenth century, termed the Second Great Awakening, professor at the University of Chicago Geoffrey R. Stone wrote,

Many factors contributed to the Second Great Awakening. In part, it was a response to the secularization of the late eighteenth century, the violence of the French Revolution, and the often bitter social and political divisions that emerged in the United States in the 1790s.2​

Stone’s topmost motivations for the Second Great Awakening were the secularization in the late eighteenth century and the social upheavals in France and the United States. Of course, England cannot be omitted in such an analysis. These social upheavals were ramifications of the Enlightenment. The Enlightenment’s emphasis on skeptical inquiry diminished the role of the Church in society that caused tremendous social upheavals, especially in commerce, as industrialization occurred. Stone elaborates further,

Whereas the Framers believed that the principles of public morality could be discovered through the exercise of reason, the evangelicals insisted that it must be grounded in Christian revelation; and whereas the Framers maintained that public morality must be founded on the civic obligation to “do good to one’s fellow man,” the evangelicals declared that true public morality must be premised on obedience to God.12 Indeed, the nineteenth-century evangelicals preached that only obedience to the Bible, not only in private life but in public law, could save America from sin and desolation.3​

While the Church informed public laws at the commencement of the Reformation, liberal Protestantism embraced society's secularization and diminished the Church's role in this capacity to enrich themselves. In support, scholar and historian Bernard Bailyn wrote on the penchants of the merchants of colonial New England and concurs. Bailyn introduces his work with the dangers of dissident Protestant merchants upon the pre-capitalistic Puritan communitarian principles,

Despite such differences, all of the first-generation Puritan merchants agreed that religious considerations were highly relevant to the conduct of trade, that commerce, being one of the many forms of human intercourse, required control by moral laws. But some of the newly arrived merchants, as they assumed power over the exchange of goods, felt the restrictive effect of these ideas when acted upon by a determined ministry and magistracy. In their confused reaction to ethical control as well as in the progress of their business enterprises lay seeds of social change…

Of all private occupations trade was morally the most dangerous. The soul of the merchant was constantly exposed to sin by virtue of his control of goods necessary to other people. Since proof of the diligence he applied in his calling was in the profits he made from precisely such exchanges, could a line be drawn between industry and avarice? The Puritans answered, as had Catholics for half a millennium, that it could, and they designated this line the “just price” …

Equally treacherous to the soul of the businessman and the good of the public was the fact that the merchants came into control of the available supply of money and charged interest on debts. One who controlled supplies of cash or credit held a knife over a vital vein in the social body.4​

German sociologist, philosopher, jurist, and political economist Max Weber testifies that the corrupting influence of wealth upon the Protestant merchants was already having its way in his time as they embraced the Enlightenment,

To be sure, these Puritanical ideals tended to give way under excessive pressure from the temptations of wealth, as the Puritans themselves knew very well. With great regularity we find the most genuine adherents of Puritanism among the classes which were rising from a lowly status, the small bourgeois and farmers, while the beati possidentes, even among Quakers, are often found tending to repudiate the old ideals. It was the same fate which again and again befell the predecessor of this worldly asceticism, the monastic asceticism of the Middle Ages. In the latter case, when rational economic activity had worked out its full effects by strict regulation of conduct and limitation of consumption, the wealth accumulated either succumbed directly to the nobility, as in the time before the Reformation, or monastic discipline threatened to break down, and one of the numerous reformations became necessary.

In fact the whole history of monasticism is in a certain sense the history of a continual struggle with the problem of the secularizing influence of wealth. The same is true on a grand scale of the worldly asceticism of Puritanism. The great revival of Methodism, which preceded the expansion of English industry toward the end of the eighteenth century, may well be compared with such a monastic reform. We may hence quote here a passage from John Wesley himself which might well serve as a motto for everything which has been said above. For it shows that the leaders of these ascetic movements understood the seemingly paradoxical relationships which we have here analysed perfectly well, and in the same sense that we have given them. He wrote:

“I fear, wherever riches have increased, the essence of religion has decreased in the same proportion. Therefore I do not see how it is possible, in the nature of things, for any revival of true religion to continue long. For religion must necessarily produce both industry and frugality, and these cannot but produce riches. But as riches increase, so will pride, anger, and love of the world in all its branches. How then is it possible that Methodism, that is, a religion of the heart, though it flourishes now as a green bay tree, should continue in this state? For the Methodists in every place grow diligent and frugal; consequently they increase in goods. Hence they proportionately increase in pride, in anger, in the desire of the flesh, the desire of the eyes, and the pride of life. So, although the form of religion remains, the spirit is swiftly vanishing away. Is there no way to prevent this – this continual decay of pure religion? We ought not to prevent people from being diligent and frugal; we must exhort all Christians to gain all they can, and to save all they can; that is, in effect, to grow rich.”

Wesley here expresses, even in detail, just what we have been trying to point out. As Wesley here says, the full economic effect of those great religious movements, whose significance for economic development lay above all in their ascetic educative influence, generally came only after the peak of the purely religious enthusiasm was past. Then the intensity of the search for the Kingdom of God commenced gradually to pass over into sober economic virtue; the religious roots died out slowly, giving way to utilitarian worldliness. Then, as Dowden puts it, as in Robinson Crusoe, the isolated economic man who carries on missionary activities on the side takes the place of the lonely spiritual search for the Kingdom of Heaven of Bunyan’s pilgrim, hurrying through the market-place of Vanity. When later the principle “to make the most of both worlds” became dominant in the end, as Dowden has remarked, a good conscience simply became one of the means of enjoying a comfortable bourgeois life, as is well expressed in the German proverb about the soft pillow. What the great religious epoch of the seventeenth century bequeathed to its utilitarian successor was, however, above all an amazingly good, we may even say a pharisaically good, conscience in the acquisition of money, so long as it took place legally. Every trace of the deplacere vix potest has disappeared.5​

The Latin idiom deplacere vix potest stems from a quotation from the fourth-century Christian Jerome: “A man who is a merchant can scarcely or never please God.” Weber supports what was advanced in the previous work, The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse Revealed in the True Structuring of the Revelation. The accumulated wealth by the Protestant merchants led to their consorting with the kings of the earth to favor secular projects instead of religious ones. In essence, they had intercourse with the kings of the earth to take away the church’s influence in society. By any reasonable account, this fulfills what John states about mystery Babylon,

Come hither; I will shew unto thee the judgment of the great harlot that sitteth upon many waters: With whom the kings of the earth have committed fornication, and the inhabitants of the earth have been made drunk with the wine of her fornication. (Revelation 17:1-2)​

Weber and Bailyn’s accounts uphold Babylon’s connection with the merchants of the earth and how they trafficked in slaves and the souls of men in the Revelation.

And after these things I saw another angel come down from heaven, having great power; and the earth was lightened with his glory. And he cried mightily with a strong voice, saying, Babylon the great is fallen, is fallen, and is become the habitation of devils, and the hold of every foul spirit, and a cage of every unclean and hateful bird… And the kings of the earth, who have committed fornication and lived deliciously with her, shall bewail her, and lament for her, when they shall see the smoke of her burning, Standing afar off for the fear of her torment, saying, Alas, alas, that great city Babylon, that mighty city! for in one hour is thy judgment come. And the merchants of the earth shall weep and mourn over her; for no man buyeth their merchandise any more: The merchandise of gold, and silver, and precious stones, and of pearls, and fine linen, and purple, and silk, and scarlet, and all thyine wood, and all manner vessels of ivory, and all manner vessels of most precious wood, and of brass, and iron, and marble, And cinnamon, and odours, and ointments, and frankincense, and wine, and oil, and fine flour, and wheat, and beasts, and sheep, and horses, and chariots, and slaves, and souls of men.. (Revelation 18:1-2, 9-13)​

Babylon’s fornication with the kings of the earth and the merchants in chapter 18 in the Revelation illustrates said historical phenomena. The Protestant merchants’ intercourse with the kings of the earth to secularize the society fostered a great falling away of the Church and the social upheavals and injustices that followed. These phenomena were the reason for the First and Second Great Awakening of the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.


[1] James L. Boyer, Are the Seven Letters in the Revelation 2-3 Prophetic, Grace Theological Journal 6.2 (1985)

[2] Geoffrey R. Stone, “The Second Great Awakening: A Christian Nation?” 26 Georgia State University Law Review 1305 (2010).

[3] Ibid.

[4] Bernard Bailyn, The New England Merchants In The Seventeenth Century (Porter Press, April 16, 2013), Kindle location 329-428.

[5] Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, Unwin Hyman, London & Boston, 1930, 59-60.