Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 1237
Delivered on Lord’s-Day Morning, May 30th, 1875, by, the Metropolitan Tabernacle, Newington.
“They overcame him by the blood of the Lamb, and by the word of their testimony; and they loved not their lives unto the death.”— Revelation 12:11.
IT IS NOT MY MAIN OBJECT at this time to expound the chapter before us. I scarcely consider myself qualified to explain any part of the Book of Revelation, and none of the expositions I have ever seen entice me to attempt the task, for they are mostly occupied with a refutation of all the interpretations which have gone before, and each one seems to be very successful indeed in proving that all the rest know nothing at all about the matter. The sum total of substantial instruction in nearly all the comments upon the Revelation amounts to this, that our heavenly Father has said in his word some mysterious things which few of his children can yet comprehend. This is just what we might have expected when the infinite God speaks to finite men, and it is no doubt intended to humble us and draw forth our reverent adoration. Happily there is a blessing to those who read and hear and keep the words of his prophecy, for had that blessing been confined to those who understand it, few would have obtained the benediction. The Revelation is a most blessed book, but its unfolding has yet to be accomplished. If you refer to the expositors you will find that they discover in this passage the dragon-ensign of pagan Rome, and its removal from its position by Constantine, who set up the cross in its stead. I do not believe the Lord took any more interest in Constantine than in any other sinner, and it seems to me little short of blasphemous to say that he was the man-child who was to rule all nations with a rod of iron, and was caught up into God and to his throne. His adoption of Christianity as the state religion was not a thing for glorified spirits to rejoice in, but a dreadful calamity, fitted only to make sport for Pandemonium. No one ever did the church a worse turn than he who first joined her to the state. The act was a piece of state policy and kingcraft and no more, a business utterly unworthy of record by an inspired pen.
It would be unprofitable to follow great interpreters through the history of the Roman empire, all of which they find in the visions of John: such an exercise would be more suitable to another day, and would rather come under the head of history than theology. I can only give you what it occurs to me that you and I would have understood by the vision if it had been granted to us. It does not appear to me to be a portion of a consecutive revelation, but a sort of summary of the visions which follow it, and in some respects a preface to them. Remember that it is a vision, and is not to be interpreted in cold blood word by word, or read as if its coherence and connection would always be apparent. In this chapter we may see, as in a panorama, the entire conflict between the principles of good and evil, between God and Satan. We have before us the old original quarrel between the woman and the serpent with which the inspired volume commences, and a clear development of the first promise, “I will put enmity between thee and the woman, between thy seed and her seed.”
Woman in her innocence was attacked by “that old serpent, called the devil, and Satan,” and she readily enough fell a prey to his deceptions, to the utter ruin of our race. At the end of that first crafty assault and speedy victory the dragon met with his rebuff in words like these: “The seed of the woman shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel”; a promise which declared that, though the woman’s seed must suffer greatly at Satan’s hand in consequence of sin, yet he would conquer in the end, and destroy the power of evil. In the Revelation the scene is changed from Eden to the heavens, and there before you stand again the woman and the serpent, in the same position of antagonism as before, the serpent still the assailant, only this time more openly so. Observe how both woman and serpent have developed; the one has become a queen bedecked with celestial splendor, and the other a python with tail so vast that he threatens to obliterate the stars with every sweep of it. The woman is no longer a simple, childlike personage, but a wonder; she walks not among the trees and the flowers, but amid the orbs of heaven. She is clothed with the sun, the moon is under her feet, and upon her head is a coronet of twelve stars. In her you see the great cause of truth and righteousness embodied—she is, in fact, the church of God in all ages, the woman whose seed blesses all the nations of the earth. The glorious cause of holiness and God, incarnated in the church, is clothed with the splendor of light, and truth, and majesty. We will not stay to explain the details of the gorgeous imagery, for in such a matter it is almost frivolity to go into detail. The church has her greater and her lesser lights: she is covered with the underived splendor of indwelling Deity, and her walk is bright with the reflected glory of holiness, while her crown of joy is found in her complete ministry as represented by the apostolic twelve. She is fair as the moon, clear as the sun, and terrible as an army with banners. Behold, then, the typical woman, and see how glorious is the cause of truth and holiness.